


Dear Reader

by SherlockWho



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, John Watson's not around anymore, M/M, Miscarriage, POV Sherlock Holmes, Podfic Available, Seriously though intense cases of the Sads in this fic, Sherlock-centric, mary's not a nice girl, no Parent!Lock, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:50:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockWho/pseuds/SherlockWho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Towards the end of his life, Sherlock takes to John's blog to correct a huge misunderstanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Dear Reader:

 

By now you’ve heard the news, I have no doubt.  That’s what brought you here, after all; the nostalgia for the old days, when John’s blog was the most entertaining thing on the internet, when the tale of Two Ridiculous Men could quicken the blood and send the imagination racing. 

My blogger was always quick to praise me, always with a sense of fond exasperation, or at least, so I like to think. 

I hope you will all indulge me this chance to set the record straight.  As always with things like fanciful fiction or even more fanciful “Tales Based on Real Events,” you only see the side of the tale your storyteller wishes you to see.  So you may have decided today to scroll through this blog and wear, for a time, his own breathless wonder at our derring-do, our rash recklessness to charge headlong into danger to tease loose some puzzle and keep my “bloody great brain” occupied, if only for a time.

There is another tale, however, a tale that I’ve carried close to my vest for a very, very long time now.  And now that his tale is done, I presume to unfold my own, here in the ashes of the life he glorified and, by doing so, made in itself glorious.  The truth, however, is hardly so spectacular—

Except in the way it changed me, slowly, by degrees, over the span of years.  After all, that is what real friendship, real companionship, and yes, a real love can do to a man. 

That is the tale I wish to tell, the story of the sociopath I was, the army doctor I met, and eventually the man I became so that I might be even in some small way worthy of him.

If you are still so inclined, then, reader, read on . . ..

Sherlock Holmes

 

 


	2. Chapter 1: Montague Street, or Enter John Watson

 

Many of you came from knowing John first so that you could peek at me.  That’s how it’s done, in the real world, or so I hear; you discover that you have a mutual acquaintance with a fascinating public figure and you prevail upon your acquaintance to introduce you to said figure.  Except, this was a slightly different version, wasn’t it?  Because sometimes, your acquaintance begs you to let him make the introduction for you, because the not-yet-quite-so-public figure is hardly to be believed, is the most amazing thing he’s ever encountered that he can hardly believe his senses, and would you please, _please_ come and see for yourself so he no longer has to think he’s gone half mad from the hot Afghani sun?

Most people would nearly beg off and relocate to Brussels before they allow themselves to be introduced to such a _freak_ , wouldn’t they?  Of course they would.  And thus I would like to introduce you to Extraordinary Thing #1 about John Watson: his enthusiasm, when sincere, will wrap you up until you find yourself becoming fond of odd things, like tea on the half hour and odd films by Monty Python and even “crap telly.”  You all read his blog and found yourselves as swept away in his tale as he was himself.

And all over me.

Was it a surprise, when you got your first look at me?  It must have been, what with John’s description of a Byronic savant.  In his blog I cut such an imposing figure, didn’t I?  I was tall and incisive, intelligent and possessing of a wit so keen it would slice anyone to ribbons.  Then you opened a newspaper one morning to a black and white photo of, oh, let’s say it was Hatman and Robin you first saw.  It was an almost bitter disappointment, was it not, when you found yourself faced with a mere mortal?  Not quite so otherworldly as you’d expected, me.  Trust me, I’m disappointed daily, myself.  How badly I want to be the creature John believed me to be.

So when I started, I posited that you knew John before you knew me.  You probably, then, read his profile, found out about his valorous service to Queen and Country, that he is indeed a doctor.  Then you let him step back and shine the lights on me.

How ridiculous.  As if a man like John Watson should ever be in anyone else’s shadow.

But never mind that.  The fact remains that you didn’t know me so well before I emerged on the stage of John Watson’s blog.  He’s a man who greatly respects another man’s privacy, so he did not ask me the questions potential flatmates typically ask each other.  He didn’t seem interested in doing so, and I gave him several opportunities.  The closest he came was during that odd surveillance opportunity at Angelo’s, carefully constructed to observe him during a stressful situation.  The man sat right across from me, obviously thrilled down to his toes, and _ate_.  Tucked right in to the pasta as though he were at his favorite childhood place, comfortable as you please and definitely not under any stress.  It was unsettling.  As soon as I made it clear that I wasn’t the type to pursue romantic entanglements, he dropped it.  _Completely_.  Whatever information he gleaned from my life from that point either came as the result of volunteered information or, presumably, from Mycroft, my brother.

So I will disclose some of this information now, so that you will see _me_ more completely, so that you can understand that the spotlight should always have been on him.

  

* * *

 

 

 

 

I did enjoy it, of course I did.  I’d told him early on that genius craves a spotlight.  We want to be known, after all.  But—well, I’m not without my warts.  I’m not a nobleman.  I am flawed, and frayed at the edges, and only a man as exceptional as John Watson could have taken more than a passing interest in keeping me right.

So imagine, if you will, a block of flats on Montague Street.  Truly, the block is not that dissimilar from what Baker Street was, in the day.  People ambled along in the daytime, whenever the weather was pleasant.  It was the setting of what could be any middle-class Londoner’s life: easy access to the heart of the city, pleasant, ordinary, _dull_.  It was maddening.  The most maddening thing about it was that the spot was run by a pensioner with a grudge against scientists.  Which meant he wanted nothing to do with a tenant who conducted experiments involving, I admit, occasionally questionable materials from time to time. 

I didn’t like the flat.  I didn’t like the landlord.  And I especially despised the fact that the whole thing had been arranged by sodding _Mycroft_ as a way of keeping his eye on me.  I put up with it for two years because I wanted out of the infernal rehab centre in which I’d found myself, and because my consulting practice hadn’t yet gotten enough private clients for me to afford such a place in such a location.  So long as I remained clean, Mycroft paid the rent. 

I’d finally freed myself when a former client, Martha Hudson, contacted me with the news that a long-term tenant of hers, a former love interest by the name of Mr. Crasters, had passed away the week before, and she remembered that I’d been unhappy with my accommodations, and did I want to lodge with her?

Her price was fair, but even so with my consulting fees not being quite robust yet I’d need a flatmate.  That couldn’t be difficult, not with the location, but I didn’t want just any organic mass of cells and bad habits sharing my space.  I’d wanted a practical arrangement, at least until such a time as I was a going concern and didn’t need the income of a flatshare.

There was nothing for it.  I’d find a flatmate, then.  But it would not be through the tedious channels others would exploit: classified adverts, flyers, dull.  I thought it would make far more sense to examine those people I knew with backgrounds I found beneficial.  If they were in no immediate need of lodging, then I would ask them if they knew anyone.  A trip to Bart’s was therefore in order.

The movers were already packing my flat as I made my way to the hospital.  I considered Molly Hooper first.  It would be exhausting, having to deal with a female flatmate, but one who adored me could prove useful in the work.  I would just be sure to give her a very stern talking-to before we initiated any paperwork.  There was nothing more to me than The Work, and it would always be so.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as I later came to realize), she was indeed not in need of a flat or a flatmate.  I asked if anyone of her acquaintance might be in such circumstances, but she knew of no one.  I briefly took out my frustrations on the corpse of a work colleague of hers (a continuing experiment on bruising patterns on those freshly dead versus those in advanced stages of decay), then chatted with Mike Stamford, an educator, about my situation.  He was jovial, as always, but he had been a long shot to start with seeing as he was married with two children.  He thought he might know of an incoming doctor on lend from a university in India, so he took his leave to investigate the possibility.

It was several hours later as I tended to a controlled experiment on the effects of certain acids on different blood types that my life changed forever.

As you can see from these circumstances, I sincerely did not see anything so momentous in my agenda.  I did not know that I would soon be meeting the man who would save my life, who would give me the career of which I’d hardly dreamed, who would be a friend to a man who’d never known any use for such.  I certainly did not imagine that I would meet my very own heart, standing outside of my body in a questionable jumper, affecting a frankly ludicrous limp and the mild expression of an idiot as a mask over his true face, that of a hardened soldier, wise and terrifying and altogether marvelous.

I have the strange ability to see conversational gambits as chess moves, and I was playing three steps ahead of all known models.  As I’m sure you have guessed by now, John did not conform to any of my known models.  His very first act was to volunteer his phone for my use; who else would do that?  Phones are an extension of a person’s identity, a part of their soul, almost.  Their most cherished idiosyncrasies can be found there.  Indeed, if you know what you’re looking at, you can tell a person’s life story by the apps on their phones, their music selections, their five most recent phone calls and/or text messages.  A phone is a piece of a person.

And here was John Watson, extending his to me like there was no danger in such a thing.

Sure enough, I used the glances I’d taken at his phone as well as that silly limp and the evidence of his recent deployment to put together a mental map of the man.  I hope it is not too precious for me to say now that I knew right then I wanted him.  I wanted him as a flatmate, but only because I wanted him as a partner in The Work.  I saw almost immediately how wonderful he would be as a helper to me.

A confession, here and now: there were dark times in the years that followed, stormy, sad days and nights during which I’d wondered how I might have behaved if I’d known how much pain I’d feel from the simple act of caring for this man as much as I did.  Yes, I entertained the thought that it would have been better for me to turn him away that first day in order to avoid the pain that would follow. 

I never decided, however, that it was possible for me to have turned John away.  I was lost the moment I laid eyes on him.  That’s the truth.

However, I did not want someone who would leave once they’d realized the kind of arsehole I could be.  I had to be clear from the very beginning regarding who I was and what I was capable of, both the good of it and the bad.  I hoped the things I said to him would wow him, but I would settle for being startling, unexpected, and at least tolerable.  I swept out of the lab, sincerely hoping I would see him again, but not at all sure of that outcome.

  

* * *

 

 

Miracle of miracles, he arrived at Baker Street promptly at 7 the next evening.  Before I even exited the cab I saw him and his ridiculous limp and felt a jarring lurch in my chest.  If no other warnings got through to me, that one did.  It really did.  I didn’t heed it.  I pushed out of the cab and shook hands with John Watson.

He surprised me over and over that day.  From agreeing to accompany me to a crime scene to accepting his new role in my work without (much) complaint to yes, shooting a man through two panes of glass to save me from myself (the statute of limitations on that one doesn’t matter anymore when the perpetrator has . . .well.).  But the thing I remember the most clearly, even after all these years, is the one word that John used over and over on me:

_Amazing._

I was hoping I’d impressed him.  I had, but in a way that was wholly unknown to me.  No one had ever said such a thing to me.  I was accepted as Mycroft’s inferior from an early age and, while even he had to admit I was superior to most of the other children in our age group, none of them were under any obligation to acknowledge it.  I was a freak, a psychopath, a _bloody wanker_ , a _toff arsehole_ , and a _posh pouf._   There were no _fantastics_ or _amazings_ or anything of the sort.

Until John. 

Genius loves an audience.  Genius _requires_ an audience.  Genius wilts under the scorn of the masses, and becomes nearly mad with the frustrated ability to shine.  John was willing to be not only my audience, but my conductor of light, my suit of mirrors for when I stood in the spotlight.  He made my genius palatable to the masses.  He dusted me off and made me shine.

You know the cases.  You’ve read them from his perspective, first from the blog then from the books he wrote after he’d retired.  I said then, and I maintain now, that the person of whom he’d written was almost completely fictional.  He saw me as something extraordinary, as I’d wanted someone to.  As I’d wanted him to.  But it led to a lot of really irritating false perceptions, perhaps most notably:

He wasn’t good enough for me.

 

In the eventuality of time, when our relationship reached its fruition and people started to learn about _Us_ , the reality of it, we received enough of these comments to indicate a significant trend in our readers.  In other words, enough people said in his blog’s comments or even as strangers in the streets that John had struck lucky.

John, of course, always indulged these utterances good-naturedly, advising that he’d struck quite lucky indeed.  Only once did it seem to rankle him, did it get under his skin.

It was upon the return of Irene Adler Norton to our lives, but that story is premature to this tale.

 

* * *

 

 

There we are, then, in the Old Days, in the exciting and very odd early days of our friendship when everything was new and previously unknown, when every case was an adventure and we seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of energy to take on every single one.

Not that we did, of course.  John was correct in his description of my case selection process.  If I accepted the boring ones I’d limit my availability when the really good cases came along.  Why would I pass up a triple homicide in favor of a lost dog?  I wouldn’t.

In the very earliest days of our acquaintance, this irked John.  He was a real arsehole, but one with a soft spot for a good sob story.  He felt it was almost cruel to pass up the chance to reconcile an old woman and her “missing” grandson (who, in truth, had run away to Tibet for a little “self-discovery,” or, more specifically, the chance to fool around with his male fitness trainer away from the watchful eye of said dowager who had threatened to withhold an inheritance from any homosexual, but that wanders a bit from the point).  I never explained to him these salient facts, however, because it seemed kinder to me to keep the truly disgusting details of humanity’s failings away from John, who seemed to me to be a beacon of all the things humans should aspire to, but don’t, because they’re in the main lazy and content to remain ignorant of all of the really fun things to do.

Yes, what I’m saying is that I often declined the boring cases because almost without exception they would break his illusions.  That was kinder, was it not?

I would normally ask that question of John.  John is not here.

Strange, but I can hear him answer it anyway: “Sherlock, you berk.  I’ve always known about other people.  Why do you think I loved you?”

It’s true.  He told me once that he loved me because he didn’t have to wonder about me, about who I really was.  Ah, yes, it comes back to me now; this was after the Mary affair.  He thought it was refreshing that I was always so disconcertingly sincere in his presence.  It’s true, I was.  After that first “amazing” I wanted to understand how deep his appreciation of me went; was it possible for it to go straight to the center of me?  Could he really be so . . .

Perfect?

He could.  He never made me feel that who I was at the heart of me was incorrect.  Socially inept, absolutely, and from the beginning he offered his services as my social diplomat.  But he didn’t think I was any less amazing simply because I didn’t conform to societal norms.

Oh, John.  Oh, my love.  How my heart aches for you.


	3. The Salvation of Sherlock Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock learns how to be brave in a darkened swimming pool and learns how to want in an abandoned power station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, already a day late in getting an update out. Ugh.

Ah, right.  My apologies.  I don’t doubt that will be the last time I will have to take a break from my narrative.  The wound of his loss is still so fresh, and I am not lying when I say that I can still hear his voice in my mind, I can sometimes still feel the phantom of him curl up behind me in our marital bed, and I am still guided by the true north of his soul.  But I have promised myself to correct this one great wrong, the wrong he did to himself when he built me up to be the impressive one in this relationship.

I have meandered through my memories, and I’m trying to tell the tale of an antisocial junkie who had the incredible fortune of meeting a hero, who had his heart remade in that hero’s image, and who tried for a very long time trying to not only gain forgiveness for his mistakes, but also prove his love by proving his selflessness.

We can tell this tale now.  I will tell you that John Watson saved me, and I’ll tell you when, and how, and why.  And I’ll let you decide, in the end, which of us was more impressive.

But know this now: Your answer does not matter to me.  Not because I doubt that you’ll come away from this story with the same understanding I have, but because that man, the man who saved me, is gone, and nothing matters now but stepping out of his spotlight.

  

* * *

 

 

The first step in the Salvation of Sherlock Holmes was taken in a darkened swimming pool.  I had felt stupid often during the case involving the Black Lotus, but it was only when John had been abducted by them that I realized that having him on cases represented a weakness almost as large as the strength I had with him by my side.  I couldn’t believe it when I realized it; that was an amateur mistake, and I’d _missed it_ from the very moment I looked into his eyes.  I was determined to cover my flank and move forward, however.  It wasn’t like there was anything else to do.

I’d realized that affinity was a weakness, but the next lesson was that affection was fatal.  Jim Moriarty showed me that, you see.  He was showing me explicitly and in a body language used as loud as a shout, explosives draped over the brightest part of my life: _This is our life, the life we’ve chosen.  If you care about the bait, you will become weak.  Weak is no fun in a playmate.  Stay interesting, Sherlock Holmes._

_Stay interesting, or next time I’ll detonate the bomb._

_“I’ll burn the heart out of you.”_

Yes, a subtextual threat as loud as a thunderclap, an exploded land mine, a vest of Semtex one split second after the trigger is pulled.  He sent the message to me in code, and I am adept at code.  I heard it and I stumbled.  I made a mistake and let him see what John meant to me.

I pulled it together, in the end.  I was able to demonstrate my commitment to not be intimidated, mainly as a message to John: _Don’t be afraid.  It’s a bluff.  Trust me._   All said with a glance.

He nodded and thereby said, _Yes, yes of course you idiot._

It was glorious.  I would have pulled that trigger and blown us all to Hell if I’d had to, because John Watson trusted me with his life.

Reading that over again, it smacks of a bit not good.  I’m leaving it there, because again, you have to see it from where I stood.  And fie on you, John.  Fie on you, my heart, for planting your voice in my mind as the representation of a conscience I didn’t want to have.

So yes, I see this as the first step of my salvation: the day I saw and acknowledged that yes, John was my compromise, and _I intend to move forward with the soft spot, thanks.  I do not intend to shut him out or shut myself away, like I’d done dozens of times before.  I intend to keep him by my side.  I intend to keep him, yes_.  This was Sherlock Holmes showing his vulnerability and not shying away from it.

To that moment, it was the bravest thing I’d ever done.

 

* * *

 

 

Then came Irene Adler.

By this time I’d settled that while yes, I was tragically involved in a maudlin unrequited romance with my own flatmate, I thought it likely that this thing could be controlled and therefore could, very likely, continue as long as John required it, as long as he needed me in his life and until he found a woman who could somehow offer him the things I did with the added benefit of the intimacy he desperately wanted.

After all, if I was able to watch John react to being strapped into a Semtex vest and threatened by jumping on a criminal mastermind and telling me to run, and still be able to treat the next morning like it was any other day, then surely I could handle anything, right?

Hm, not quite.  It appears there was quite a challenge in 1) watching John Watson smile flirtatiously at an attractive and naked woman, and 2) later, watching him commiserate with said woman, who’d just resurrected herself from the dead, over their mutual helplessness in their affection for me despite their sexual orientation.

Before we head too far into all of the conjecture that has swirled around these series of events—first, after John’s blog was published, second, after he novelized the whole dramatic affair along with Mrs. Norton’s surprise reappearance in our lives, and somehow has survived to now—I want to make it perfectly clear here and now that I had no relationship with Ms. Adler, inappropriate or otherwise.  As far as I’m concerned our interactions were extremely limited and barely constituted a rather antagonistic working situation.  The insistence to make of it something it wasn’t is baffling to me, and ended up being one of the things John and I quarreled over until nearly the end.

However, watching John react to her presence in our lives, and metering his reactions to her influence to established norms, was quite enlightening and, consequently, rather compromising.  It did significant things to see how he smiled at her when she suggested that she had an interest not only in detective stories, but also in detectives.  It was devastating, John Watson in Seduction Mode: confident, assertive, and masculine, promising a fury of sexual capability burning under the surface of it.  It reduced me to about three full seconds of babbling before I was able to properly intercept the play being made right before my eyes.  How humiliating.

Later, when she’d revealed that she still breathed to a stunned John Watson and during their ensuing tête-à-tête, I found my chest had become strangely compressed.  It was the only possible solution to the tightness; after all, the sight of this infuriating, fascinating woman had nothing to do with it.  I’m ashamed to admit that it took until later that evening for me to realize that the tight feeling didn’t begin upon the sight of her, but rather at the sound of John’s impassioned plea for mercy on my behalf:

_“Tell him you’re alive.”_

As I listened to the rest of the conversation it only seemed to grow more surreal.  This was the John everyone else saw, the fierce, steady defender of my body and my mind.  I had somehow never seen him before; all I’d known was the rumpled, exasperated partner and flatmate, and he had been more than enough for me to deal with.

This side of John, the one that brooked no arguments and allowed no treachery, took my breath away.  When Adler made her insinuations about us, even over John’s rather weak and helpless protestations, I waited with baited breath to see what he would say next.  He said nothing, he only stared at her.  My imagination ran rampant: Was he realizing it, too?  Was he finally seeing the thing that was so big between us that I’d been unable to ignore it from nearly the first moment?  He wasn’t running away, or shouting, or even laughing (which he sometimes did, as if it was a big joke).  He was only staring.  Was he brave enough now?  Could we please just _get on with it_?

Not that I even knew what that would mean, _getting on with it_.  I don’t know what I was hoping for, but that moment, when I saw the protective, _sworn_ side of John, made me ache for him so violently had to decamp immediately.  I didn’t want to see her become cruel to him. 

Fortunately for my slipping pride, John chose to interpret my immediate departure as some rampant emotion over _her_.  Why on earth do people think it’s possible for me to have found enough in her that would compel me to love her so quickly?  She’s not loyal, or kind, or heroic.  She’s too much like me: too proud, too sold on her own intelligence, too competitive and striving to be recognized as a great mind in her age.  Why would anyone think that like attracts like?  Do they know nothing about the basics of electromagnetism?

Listen, Adler and I are negative ions.  We cannot attract to each other, not naturally, not easily.  We attract to positive ions, every time. 

That’s John.  He’s a positive ion, a hero in search of a cause.  I provided him a cause, and I had no interest in letting Adler recruit him to her own.  The thought that he had to be envious of me with her was ridiculous to me.  Still is.

Later, much later, when he presented me with her phone (now quite devoid of any confidential state secrets) and told me the silly fabrication Mycroft had fed him about her relocation to America, I knew what lived between those lines.  I knew he was protecting me, yet again, from what he thought would be painful news.  I felt that truth in my heart and I let it grow there, the knowledge that he cared enough to spare me from pain. 

John didn’t know how to react, initially, when Irene Adler Norton came to see us shortly after our relationship changed.  At first he was terrified, really; he thought he’d been lied to by Mycroft, that she had indeed relocated to America since her new husband was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, and she had come to call to ask a favor of us in sparing him from some horrible blackmail attempt.  It slowly dawned on him that he’d been lied to, yes, but not by Mycroft. 

Surprisingly, his reaction to this wasn’t as severe or cold as I’d expected.  He only shook his head and did what all emotionally constipated British men did in situations like this: he made tea.

Adler was as light and flirtatious as she’d been before, apparently willing to overcome her certainly substantial embarrassment at how I’d defeated her—that is, until she realized how the dynamic between me and John had changed.  I saw the change come over her, the rage in her eyes swelling and then subsiding.

_“Well, well, Dr. Watson.  It seems you’ve struck lucky, haven’t you?”_

That was when John grew incensed.  He rose from his chair abruptly, grabbing belatedly at the cane he’d suddenly developed a need for again (that story will come later) before nearly crashing to the floor in a spectacular fashion.  He was on his knees, but there rose within him something ferocious, something ungodly, as he stared up at her, bottom teeth bared.  “Do you really think I don’t know that?” he asked in a whisper.  “After what I’ve gone through, watching him die twice, do you think I don’t know?”

It was personal, then.  With most people the words were nothing more than well-wishes, congratulations of an almost mean nature, just made in jest.  But with her, there was a history, a standoff, and in John’s eyes she was tallying the score and declaring a winner, nothing more.  Everyone else saw the pain we’d endured to be where we were, enjoying a temporary reprieve with the person we cared most for in the world.  She had none of the context of our history, and it infuriated him that she could be so flippant.

At least, that was the surface of it.  My John was a deep well; you couldn’t see how deep with just a glance.  Far down beneath that reaction of outrage lurked an even more horrible emotion.

She left our lives again, her case rejected.  She would have to be smart enough to make it through alone, this time.  John stewed for several days; he was withdrawn and quieter than usual, his brow furrowed, his fingers still on the keyboard of his laptop, his gaze sad when he bothered to send it my way.  None of my usual tricks worked in pulling him out of this fugue; he did not respond to the violin, to noxious experiments, to blatant seduction attempts.  He only shook his head and turned away from me.  Twice I rose from a light slumber to find him in his chair, bent forward and sobbing.

He couldn’t talk about it.  For three days he walled himself off in silence and kept himself at a distance.  When he slept it was still with me, but he didn’t stay long.  It was horrible.

But finally he roused himself, and on the fourth day he found me in the kitchen, bent over an experiment.

“Sherlock?”

I could hear the weariness in his voice and I reacted to that.  I turned away from what was on the stove and looked at him. He was rumpled and looked not only tired, but truly old.  I schooled my features so my distress at his appearance didn’t show.  “John.”

“I’m a war veteran.”

I nodded.  “Yes.”

“I have a medical degree.”

“You do.”

“I’d like to think I’ve helped more than hindered on cases with you.”

“You have.”

“I stayed with you, nursed you back after you left the bloody hospital, when you were shot.”  His emotion crested and waned in the space of that sentence.

I nodded.  I had a hunch where this was headed, and I hated it.

“I killed a man who meant to kill you.  I’ve pulled you out of a hundred stupid situations you’d got into.”

This was already going too far.  “John.”

“No.  I’m going to finish this.”  His voice cracked, and he took a deep breath and tried to pull himself up, his left hand in a white-knuckled grip on his cane.  “I have made my mistakes, and I could have been a better friend—”

“John, stop this.”

“Sherlock, what do I have to do?” he sobbed, his demeanor splintering into a mask of overwhelming fear.  “What do I have to do to deserve you?  When will I ever be enough?”

I couldn’t speak.  I only stared at him, the cognitive dissonance of what he’d just said contrasted against how I saw him so jarring that all I could do was stare.  Not enough?  John Watson, not enough?  Sheer farce.  The second step of the Salvation of Sherlock Holmes was being exposed to the Sworn Soldier, the man who would kill or die for me.  That was the man I’d seen confronting Adler in the abandoned power station.  He was ablaze with his determination and strength, his steady courage burning brightly in that dark, dim place.  The vision of him like that, and for _me_ , saw me through so many dark days: my John, burning like a torch.  I saw him and I was in awe.  It was all I could do to behave properly around him and not beg him to take me over the kitchen table. 

All of my asexual pretenses crumbled.  I _wanted_.  I craved him.  I’d never wanted anyone, but I wanted him, and more importantly I wanted to _give myself to him._

That surrender, the willingness to surrender—intoxicating.  And it made me a little more human to know the truth and to accept it.

So when this torch of a man, this pillar of strength and courage, asked if he would ever be enough for me—the horror if it!  The sheer, idiotic injustice of it.  It infuriated me. 

Do you see now, why I had to set this record right?  The man I shared my life with—I was never deserving of him.  It wasn’t the other way round.  I was a shallow, pretty drama queen with a big brain, who fortunately used it to right wrongs.  He was the archangel with the sword dripping blood.

How do you all not know this?  You see, but you do not observe.  No, it’s worse.  You’re all _blind._


	4. Fear and Identity, and the Sea in Your Veins

Moving along, then.

I’m wondering if you can guess what the next step in my salvation was.  If you cannot, then you’re far too idiotic to be reading this blog.  I’d suggest you take up macramé. 

Step one was revealing my vulnerabilities to an enemy.  Step two was stripping myself of my asexual identity.  Step three—

I was afraid.  And I showed that fear to John.

I’d been taught from a very early age that there are few absolutes in life, but the supernatural was _absolutely_ not to be believed.  There were no ghosts, vampires, or werecreatures.  There was no scientific explanation supported by documented studies, therefore it was impossible. 

That is why the events at Baskerville so deeply disturbed me.  Belief is a funny thing, is it not?  The spiritual believe in a disembodied and morally strict all-powerful God, and they invoke their faith.  This was what contributed to what made me appear, to John, to be “actually terrified.”  Because when I went down into Dewar’s Hollow, I had total _faith_ that there was no such thing as supernatural creatures.  But that’s all it really is, isn’t it?  Faith, simple faith in science.  And it was shaken by the appearance of that hound.

I _doubted._   I was shaken to my core because I allowed the suspicion that my truth, my absolute bedrock truth, backed by science and supported by scientists, was _wrong_.  And when that solid ground shifted under my feet, I lost my footing and fell.

My instinct in situations like that is to hide.  Why?  Because I was raised with Mycroft Holmes, a primary subscriber to the notion that showing weakness, showing fear, was an intolerable mistake.  I suppose it’s one of the many attributes that made him so successful at his chosen vocation, but frankly he was cruel in how he taught me this lesson.  He teased me mercilessly and tortured me over any vulnerability I showed, exploiting those vulnerabilities repeatedly until I was able to either exhibit enough bravado to seem like I’d overcome my fear, or kept myself busy enough that it was never worth his investment of time to pursue his “therapy.”

I do not tell this story to obtain your pity.  I don’t care about that.  I only wanted to illustrate how deep my need to preserve my cool façade ran.  It was a self-preservation instinct as strong as running away from a fire.

But there I sat, in front of that fire at the Cross Keys, trembling and sweating, and I _let John see._

I wasn’t sure before that moment what his reaction would be to such a thing.  Remember, I’d cultivated one of the most complete stiff upper lips in modern day London, and that’s all John had ever seen.  Fine, yes, he’d seen my petulance and my temper, but those were aggressive emotions.  Fear, doubt—those are very passive emotions.  They tell your secrets and give away your advantages.

But as I was telling John what I’d seen in the Hollow, I exposed my secrets and my weakness.  I told him that, as a man of science, my greatest fear was doubt.  If I cannot trust my senses and my mind, then I am just as weak as those deists who insist that a man can walk on water—because what if they’re right?  What if their faith is more accurate than mine? 

These are thoughts I’d had before, of course, but I’d kept them to myself.  It was easy to, after all; science had never let me down before, so there was no reason to think that it would start doing so now. 

I braced myself for the penalty of this.  I was prepared to deploy my razor tongue, as I’d often had to do with Mycroft.  I suppose I did deploy it, come it to that, but only because he started to minimize his own importance: _“Why would you listen to me?  I’m just your friend.”_

It was the last straw, do you see?  I’d had an exhausting day.  My “religion” was challenged, I’d suffered doubt, and I’d exposed my fear to him.  Having him so severely understate his importance to me was too much.  He was so much more to me than a friend.

So yes, I said something cutting about not having friends.  And he left our conversation with a snippy remark—but no other attempt to torture me or tease me.  Honestly, I’d known it would play out this way.  I knew he would be deserving of my confidence.  I knew he would be worth my trust.

I trusted John Watson, so I showed him my fear.

 

* * *

 

 

The next step in my salvation was perhaps the most irrevocable.  Until now the changes happening to me were largely under the surface, almost illusory.  This next progression would shift the very concept of my identity—even my very existence.

Of course, Mycroft had heard about the episode at Baskerville.  I’m sure I missed a CCTV device near the fireplace; I wasn’t exactly focused on Mycroft’s machinations at that moment.  But, according to him, when he saw my confession to John about my doubt, he realized precisely what was going to happen next.  He explained it to me in a largely-nonverbal fashion over tea while John was out at Tesco or Sainsbury’s or Boots or somewhere.  Wherever he was, it wasn’t Savile Row. 

(This was where John would normally exclaim “Oi!” and/or “Arse!” and throw something light and fluffy at me.  Shame he’s not here.)

At any rate, Mycroft explained to me the series of events he’d decided was most likely, and we formulated several plans and adjusted those plans as the weeks unfolded and dear old _Jim from IT_ fell into a pattern.  Damn it, but Mycroft was right; Moriarty was starved for action and he’d decided to show off. 

His impetuosity did not imply that he was no longer dangerous.  In fact, the reason we even bothered with these precautions and plans was because Jim was the greatest threat we faced to that point, and because _John had seen me afraid._   It made him precious to me, and that’s what Mycroft saw.  He saw what John meant to me and he knew that Moriarty had seen it, too, at that darkened pool that felt like it had happened ten years in the past.  He knew what I had to lose, and he knew there was only one way to completely guarantee the safety of the people I cared about, even as he scorned me for making such a ridiculous mistake as _caring_ in the first place.

As these matters came to a head I watched John.  I soaked in his presence, sought his companionship, and tried to absorb the feel of him standing near me, by my side.  I knew I would have to be alienated from him for a time so I could keep him safe, so I could eliminate every aspect of the threat to him.

Let’s not pretend too much.  I would not have given up my identity and, in essence, my very freedom for Lestrade, or even for Mrs. Hudson.  I was doing this for John, only for John.  I know he made of this something it wasn’t, something noble, that I had decided my life weighed against three others was wanting, but the truth is that the measurement only required the one life against mine to prompt the sacrifice.

But even with the exposure to him, the time I spent with him wasn’t enough.  As I stood at the edge of the roof of St. Bart’s, Moriarty bleeding out through a head wound behind me and John staring up at me from the asphalt below, I felt my eyes prickle.  This was a sincere emotional reaction, and I indulged in it.  Why not?  I would stop being Sherlock Holmes for a while, at least until Mycroft told me in person it was safe to resume it.  And it was Sherlock Holmes that John appreciated, would protect with his soldier’s gun and soldier’s determination.  I would miss him, so much.  I would miss my heart.

So yes, step four of my salvation was stepping off that roof and trading my life to protect John’s—because do not doubt that I gave up my life.  It would hardly have been worse to be dead, because at least then I wouldn’t have to endure the pain of being without him, knowing he thought me dead.  Ghost: it’s not a fun gig.

Two years I spent chasing a disorganized, rather panicked assortment of low-lifes across the globe.  Two years I picked apart Moriarty’s web.  I developed alias after alias, put on and doffed disguise after disguise.  I was even apprehended after a particularly maudlin night in a bar in Belgrade, weeping into a very bad whisky and missing my John so much I thought I would disintegrate.  I was held by my captors, interrogated, and tortured; I made an escape and was captured again, only to be again held, interrogated, and tortured.  I despaired of ever getting away and was very close to being bludgeoned to death before Mycroft decided to _finally_ , after two long  years, step in and declare me resurrected.

I had endured so much pain to make my return to London.  Do you know the transformative power of pain?  Do you know how it hollows you out and refills you with the tears you’ve shed until you feel composed of sea water?  That grounds you, makes you more thoughtful, more deliberate.  It also, in a way, makes you more daring.

I dared.  I did.  I dared to hope that there would still be a John Watson for me, a man who would stare down any threat on my behalf, who would shoot cabbies for me and threaten dominatrices for me.  I entered the Landmark that night, hoping to find John and tell him that I was back, and we could finally _get on with it_ already if he was so inclined; nevermind all that about his sexual orientation, surely this was far too instinctive a love to be questioned . . .

But there sat Mary, shining and joyful and clearly _John’s_ , and my hopes all died.


	5. Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock remembers how he became indebted to Mary Morstan.

Yes, my hopes died at that first glance, when I realized that he was smiling and stammering and dressed in a better suit than I’d seen him in and—well, the setting, the dress she wore.  It was all indicative of a very special occasion indeed, was it not?  Mycroft had tried to warn me and I hadn’t listened, so overcome was I by my own rush to get to John.  This was the penalty for my hubris.

But it wouldn’t be fair to resign my task, to leave and forget my most essential truth: There is no Sherlock Holmes without John Watson.  At the moment the realm was in need of Sherlock Holmes, so therefore I would do my level best to secure John Watson.  It wasn’t for Queen and Country, you must know that.  It was because what was left to me, if I did not?  What would my life be if I did not at least try to win John again as my friend—or, if even that was not possible, as my work colleague?  I needed some small part of him if I was to stop myself from sliding into the hell my life had been before.

So I crafted a plan to make him smile, to make him rise to his feet with a laugh and a merry shout, to have him share in the joy that did still exist in me at the sight of him.  You have to understand that those silly, forlorn hopes of mine, the hopes of a tender and loving John, were not the full depth of what I’d felt in that moment.  It was only the hat that had been blown from my head, to mercilessly employ a foppish metaphor.  The rest of it was sheer relief that he looked well, that he was healthy and thriving, that I’d _done what I’d set out to do_ to protect him and the life I considered more precious than my own.

When finally he tore his eyes away from the woman across from him to set them firmly on me, and when he’d realized that he’d been deceived, he did not react in the way I’d hoped, not in that capacity, either.  There were no shouts of joy or happy exclamations.  What a disappointing evening this was shaping up to be!  And how much of a dolt I realized I was, since I hadn’t considered this was possible, that John would have been so . . .affected by the illusion I’d staged two years prior.  I suppose there was some small, cold comfort in that, but it took hours before I could realize it.

In the meantime we migrated from restaurant to diner to takeaway dive, John’s temper repeatedly getting the better of him.  We were so distressingly out of sync.  I did not understand him, not the way I had before when we shared a flat and a vocation and, at times it seemed, a mind.  I could not find our common ground.  When finally he blooded my nose and thus effectively ended our conversation, I knew I’d lost him.  It was over.  It was all I could do to maintain my composure and dignity in front of his—his _Mary_.

She surprised me by offering her assistance in bringing him back to me.

This recommended her to me, and not only because the action was generous.  The action spoke of security, of confidence, and of a form of recklessness that most of the women in London did not seem to possess.  After all, she’d snagged herself a proper prize in John Watson, and I wouldn’t be the only one to think so.  Anyone who’d spoken to him for even just five minutes knew what he was, the complexity of him, the magnitude of him.  Honestly, I couldn’t be the only one, could I?  If this Mary Morstan could have the presence of mind to bring him back to me, even after the devastation that was clear on his face when he’d recognized mine, then she was a force to be reckoned with.

Oh, if only I’d realized how very much of a force she was.

I walked away from the spot where the cab had taken them away from me, not at all certain that I would ever see John again.  I thought as I walked; I thought about the look on his face when he saw me, the pure devastation in his eyes.  He had recognized me, and in the next breath his surprise revealed the depth of his pain.  He’d been hurt by the illusion I’d created, unfathomably hurt.

John Watson was not the kind of man to put his pain—no, not any of his emotions, truly—on display.  He hadn’t been from the very beginning of our acquaintance.  Granted, I did get to experience the treat of his brilliant anger, both directed at me and, more wonderfully, directed at anyone who was a threat to me.  When he cared to use it his emotional mask could be flawless.  That he had been helpless to conceal the depth of his pain from me was startling in its implications.

Had he been as bereaved as I had been during our separation?  My first sight of him that evening—relaxed, nerve-addled, even a little playful—belied that speculation, but it did not override it.  As I’ve said, he could be brilliant at emotional masks when he needed to be.

The problem with John’s acting, and the reason that I was not able to let him in on my errands or, more, bring him with me, was that he could be rash, even more so than I could be.  He has an exceptional instinct in battle situations, but my John would do anything at all to protect me from a bad situation, even if he’d been advised in advance that it was a ploy and I wasn’t in immediate danger.

To be fair, I reacted in much the same way whenever presented with John-in-Danger. 

That was why it had been decided that he could not come with me, because we would distract each other too much, because Moriarty _knew_ , and surely that meant that Moriarty’s best agents knew, too.  They knew that John was my pressure point, and if I was alive and weak I would reach out to him.  And if I did, he would have had one moment of unreserved relief at the news.  That would be one moment too many.

At the very least the assassins left behind to keep their eyes on John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson would be carefully watching them for any signs of insincerity, and, knowing how John could be, I could not risk him.

I suppose that, come it to that, I would have rather died than expose him to that danger.

But in reflection upon the events of that night, and especially the realization of John’s pain, I thought that yes, even that small glimpse had made the sacrifices of the two years away worth it.  He’d done what I hoped he would do; he coped.  He moved forward.  He’d found a way to smile again, to enjoy life, and that was good.  He hadn’t spent the time under glass, no, but that was just the worst of my fantasies of returning home, the one I returned to most often during the worst of the torture: the image of John, unchanged, enshrined in our domestic routine, settled in his chair with the newspaper and a cuppa.

After I’d officially returned to Baker Street, I felt besieged by the ghost of that John Watson.  The spectre was everywhere in the flat: at the hob, making risotto one moment, then at the desk composing a blog post the next moment.  At first I was annoyed by these peripheral apparitions, but after only a few hours I found myself doing all I could to encourage them.  I did not look directly at them for fear of their vanishing.

When next I saw John I was pulling him with force out of a bonfire.  I was impressed by, and a little curious about, Mary—her understanding of skip codes occurred to me to be unusual, at the very least, for a nurse in the employ of NHS—but above that by several thousand feet was my awareness that I’d just proved to her and all the spectators in the area (and, possibly, those not in the area, including Mycroft) that John was still my greatest pressure point.

Much later, when I finally got around to having dinner with the real woman behind AGRA and Mary and the gun that had punched a hole in my chest, I asked her about what had kept her from killing John once I’d revealed myself to be alive.  Her eyes were as sharp as a razor as she studied me.  Even in cuffs and from behind bullet proof glass she was dangerous; she pushed her chips around the small takeaway container I’d provided her (no cutlery allowed, not even plastic) and finally grimaced.  “I shouldn’t have to explain it to you,” she answered softly.  “You know what he’s like.  You know he can find a heart inside even the worst person.”

I remember responding to this with a shrug.  Perhaps my next words weren’t exactly as I remember them here, but I’m doing my level best to recall them: “Actually, I didn’t know that, not until this very moment,” I’d said, my own voice as soft as she’d made hers.  “Are you saying you loved him?”

She shook her head and tried to make herself bigger than she was.  She was beaten and confined, and very likely on the verge of being released into the custody of some very dangerous people with a grudge against her, but she still understood tactical advantages and didn’t want to expose those visceral vulnerabilities to me, not even then.  “I’m not like you,” she whispered.  “I’m not capable of love.  There’s a great deal of distance between having a heart and knowing how to use it.”

I don’t know how true that statement was, I’m sorry.  I think this story would be more compelling (if a little more clichéd) if I were able to tell you that John was such a magical entity that he could make a true psychopath fall in love with him.  I couldn’t read her, do you understand?  That was her true strength, her ability to make even me, the most observant man in London at the time, believe whatever story she fed me.  I just don’t know the truth.  I know only that, as I ushered my parents rather forcefully from my flat at John’s appearance the day after the bonfire, somehow Mary had helped to bring him back to me.

Not only did she find a way to help reunite us, but he was clean-shaven again.

I can’t tell you the extent of my gratitude.  Even just a week deprived of him in a flat that echoed with his shade had driven me nearly mad.  Having him there instead of his ghost made it possible for me to _think_ again, and suddenly Mycroft’s terrorism case made perfect sense.

My conductor of light was mine again.  In exchange for this miracle I was willing to give Mary Morstan the wedding of her dreams.

Even if it meant the devastation of my own secret heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering, no, I don't have a beta and I don't have a Britpicker. If you notice any continuity errors it's me, all me, and nobody else.
> 
> Also, I'm hoping to get back into this in a more consistent way soon. I'm worried the holidays won't make that easy, but I'm really enjoying this sad, sad tale so far. (Probably means there's something very wrong with me, but that's not really saying anything odd.)


	6. The Spectre at the Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recollections of temptation, gratitude, and sadness in the wake of John's wedding.

I thought at first that the best (and, admittedly, the easiest) way to accomplish giving Mary Morstan the wedding of her dreams was to abstain entirely.  After all, I would end up being the spectre at the feast, wouldn’t I?  I would remind John of the unpleasantness of our cohabitation, especially how I made it nearly impossible for him to maintain a romantic relationship.  I did not understand how he could pretend to be so enraptured by the banality of the women he courted, not when one text from me about the possible danger inherent in skulking around the meth labs run by someone trying to poison my Homeless Network brought him at a run to my side.  Besides, I did not bring John and Mary together, not directly.  I was not involved in their assortment of “Couple Friends.”  I was not normal enough to be at a wedding without something unflattering happening during the event.  

Then John came round Baker Street and asked a question of me, right after making a statement that shorted out my cognitive abilities for a full minute.

_I want to be up there with the two people that I love and care about most in the world . . .Mary Morstan . . .and . . .you._

Two people he loved most in the world.

I was one of them.

 

* * *

 

 

I was not the man he’d met in the laboratory at St. Barts almost four years prior.  I was not that aspiring asexual sociopath who pursued knowledge and science as absolute truths and felt that other people were liabilities.  I had accepted him as a pressure point and did not flinch from other people seeing the same.  I allowed him to awaken within me a physical yearning, inspired by the emotion I couldn’t fight.  I let him see my fear and uncertainties.  I gave up my life in exchange for his.

I was a new thing.  And John had just told me he loved me.

You can temper it if you must by saying this confession of love was made in the most platonic way possible.  You can say that it was said in connection with, and therefore watered down by, its connection to Mary.  You can and will say it would be ridiculous for me to make of it more than it was.

You’re right.  I wasn’t making of it more than it was.  I was making of it exactly what it was.  The man I loved had just confessed his own love for me, and it was significant enough to eclipse the love he had for everyone else in his life _save the woman he was marrying_. 

If I had known that morning that I would hear those words that day, I would not have been cauterizing an eyeball in the kitchen when John arrived.  I would have cleaned the flat (yes, John, I knew how to clean the flat, even then).  I would have been dressed in my best suit.  I would have had something fragrant bubbling on the hob—perhaps a savory stew.

I hadn’t known, so I hadn’t been prepared.  That left me extremely vulnerable to any request he made of me. 

_So, in fact.  Y-you mean.  I’m your.  Best—_

_Friend?  
Man.  Yeah, ‘course you are.  ‘Course you’re my best friend._

Oh, John. 

My knees felt a little weak.  Me.  The man who had forced him to suffer through a wide and unnecessary valley of grief.  Me.  The idiot who got him into life-threatening situations with a regularity that made Lestrade question his sanity for sticking around.  I was his best friend.

There was no way I was going to say no.

It was only much later that evening, after I’d recovered from the giddy sweetness of the thought of John’s love, the sound of it, that I realized what I’d really gotten myself into.

I had to go to the wedding.  I had to participate.  I had to watch—no, I had to officially witness—John’s vows to spend his life with Mary.

For one uncharitable moment I thought that perhaps she was torturing me.  Perhaps she had planted this idea in John’s head, the idea of asking his strange former flatmate to be his best man, as a way of proving her permanent betterment of me. 

It was a sour and vindictive moment of doubt.  Mary had been generous to me, almost to a fault.  She had encouraged our continued association, even indicated contentment that we were once again thick as thieves.  I swallowed the lump in my throat.  It had been a deeply emotional day, and I wasn’t yet accustomed to that.  I would rest, then I would throw myself into preparations, especially my speech.  Perhaps Lestrade could help me with it.

 

* * *

 

 

Mary needed my help.

She said that John wasn’t into it, all the planning that would be needed to pull off the wedding she wanted (and that I felt that she deserved).  She was overwhelmed by guest lists, caterer selection, color swatches and ushers and the venue and the wedding party.  She was near tears when she confessed to me that she didn’t think she could pull it off.

So I dove directly into the meat of the planning.  Mary and John came round Baker Street daily, bringing their materials and brochures and swatches, bringing the lists of the guests they felt obligated to invite against the much smaller list of people they wished would attend.  They brought their menus and their party favors.

I focused.  It’s rather an interesting exercise in logic, weddings.  Where to sit antagonists while satisfying traditional rules of family placement; how to accommodate multiple dietary requirements whilst adhering to a strict budget; when it would be wise to advise the bride that two members of her bridal party were sleeping together and, while lesbianism isn’t inherently scandalous, their relationship was new enough that they had very little control over themselves.

I will admit that I was entertained by the exercise, enough that it muted my agony.  I had become something of a master at masking my feelings when I was near either John or Mary—at least, so I thought—so I wasn’t afraid of either of them torturing me with overly demonstrative displays of their affection for each other, unlike Mary’s lesbian friends.  But the agony was there nevertheless, buried under layers of neutrality every time I laid eyes on the invitations, or the interlocked wedding ring motifs, or the cake topper.  John and Mary, John and Mary.  John, the man who had saved me from the mechanical life I’d been planning, and Mary, the woman who had saved him from re-entering his own version of beige hell. 

They deserved happiness.  I would give it.  I would give anything and everything.

I gave John his stag night.

I’ve come to understand that stag nights are usually celebrated by a group of male friends and can be quite outrageous affairs that, frankly, are often horribly disrespectful of the bride to be.  I do not understand the custom of celebrating the entrance into marriage by giving the man one more glimpse at the scandalous life he’s been trying to escape since he met his betrothed.  I did not feel this was the right practice for my honorable John.  I focused instead on the customary drunkenness.  I could certainly ensure we achieved that.

We did, brilliantly.  We ended up so spectacularly _slaughtered_ that we were dozing on the stairs leading up to the B flat at 221 Baker Street barely two hours later.  Only another four hours to go!

We settled on an impromptu game of forehead detective, using Rizla paper.  John asked me if I thought he was a pretty lady.  Or perhaps it was Madonna, whoever she was; I remember that she was the name on his Rizla paper.  I only know for certain that he was soft and warm and fuzzy, and he was in Baker Street with me, as he should be.  I was very drunk, and I wanted to touch him, and I wanted him to touch me.

He did, you know.  He did touch me.  Just a very little.  Only his hand on my knee.  He shrugged it off and said he didn’t mind, and I didn’t either.  Quite the opposite, actually.  He was warm and soft and safe, and I was warm and soft, and he was mine.

The clues were strange and I was fuzzy.  I wasn’t myself, and I was so terrifyingly tempted.  I wanted.  God, how I wanted him.  He blinked up at me through his blond eyelashes, his eyes as blue as the deep ocean, his smile soft and warm and fuzzy, and I had never felt so close to him, so desperately his and in love.

It was then that we were joined by Mrs. Hudson and Tessa, the woman who would eventually help me thwart a murder during the wedding reception, simply because she remembered John’s middle name.  It was then that I realized I’d been on the verge of doing something unforgivable to a new friend, to John’s bride.  There was no honor in that, and John deserved an honorable best man.  She saved me from myself.

I should have been grateful.  I was resentful. 

Why couldn’t I, just once, have this?  John in my arms, my John, real and happy and loved?  Why did the world insist on rushing in to the spaces it was not welcome?

Because it wasn’t time yet.  I know that now.  But I was so tired that night.  It was my weakest point, and somehow I survived it.  Bully for me.


	7. Worth a Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock recounts how a marriage ended.

After the wedding, when my speech had been made and the waltz had been played and my observation about how completely John’s life was about to change had been inadvertently blurted out on the dance floor, I left.  I was tired and lonely, and I wanted to be away from the forced gaiety of the event.  I had done my duty by John and Mary.  I had made my vow that nothing would hurt them or the child who was on the way.

I didn’t intend to fall apart, not really.  One day, that was the promise I’d made to myself; one day of not returning John’s texts, of not being responsible or composed, of not appearing unaffected.  Surely I deserved that much, after that long, drawn-out performance of fraternal devotion. 

But one day turned into two, which turned into a week, and before I could pull myself together for five consecutive minutes three weeks had passed.  The pain was no less, and I couldn’t bear even the sight of the letters J, O, H, and N in any proximity to each other.  I therefore flipped past all of the text messages he’d sent me and went directly to Mrs. Hudson’s message.

_Lady Smallwood’s been by. Seems rather urgent._

A member of the gentry seeking out the services of a consulting detective?  Interesting.

And just like that I was back in business.  In fact, I rather believe that my fugue contributed significantly to my processing of the relevant details of the case presented by Lady Smallwood—or, at least, I believed that at the time.  After all, I secured Janine without much effort at all, and I was certain I was flying under Mycroft’s quite considerably effective radar.  All I needed was a boost to my processing—a temporary increase in bandwidth, if you will. 

It was in the pursuit of that increased bandwidth that John finally found me.

You’ve read the details of this in John’s second book, I believe; is that the one titled something about vows?  Or was it rather the dog one?  I cannot keep them straight.  I could, of course, go into John’s study and examine his bookshelf to find the answers, but . . .well.  I haven’t been in there, not in months.  And I would rather not disturb a single mote of dust in there, not when every surface is untouched by any hand but his.  The memory of him lingers there, and as long as that’s true I can preserve him in my mind there, respect his privacy and give him room to work for all eternity.  I can lie to myself and imagine he’s still there, and he will join me for tea.  Eventually.

Yes, I’ve reverted to living with his shade, after all these years.  Needs must when the devil drives.

At any rate, you know the details of what followed.  You know that I had several stressful confrontations that day, from John to Mycroft to yes, Janine trying (again) to seduce me, this time in the bath.  I will not deny that I felt some small amount of vindication in John’s reaction to Janine in my lap, her mouth on mine.  It was delicious, seeing him outraged and unbelieving, because some elemental, visceral part of him knew what I’d known for years: I was his.  No one else had any right to touch me.  It was a trespass of the very laws of nature that anyone should _dare_.

You know that I visited Janine in order to get to Magnussen.  And you know what I found there.  You know what happened.

What you don’t know is that sometimes that scar itches.  The scar is small and round, and the flesh at the edges of it is raised a little, and John would sometimes, in moments of intimacy between us, trace it with a fingernail.  It tickled when he did that, but I said nothing because there was pain in his eyes.  Once he tried to pick it away with his fingernail.  That smarted a little, and I had to stop him.  He wanted to erase it from me, do you see? 

But it itches, sometimes.  Sometimes he would put ointment on it, and sometimes he would say, “Oi, arse!  Stop fussing with it.” 

Sentiment.  It’s _hateful_.

What John didn’t know until a few days ago, as he struggled to stay conscious and not succumb to his final illness, as I let my words rush over him in an attempt to keep him with me, was that when I died from that bullet, what brought me back was the thought that he was in danger.  I could not bear a world without him in it; it was incorrect, fundamentally _incorrect_ for there to be a world without a John Watson in it.  I came back from death to put things to rights, to protect him so that the world could keep doing whatever it did for whatever reason it did it.  If there had to be a world at all, and apparently yes, there did have to be one, then there should be a John Watson in it to make it worth anything at all.

I couldn’t let my mistake in not seeing Mary for what she was rob the unworthy world of him. 

I had to protect him from everything: Mary, Magnussen, Mycroft, and yes, myself. 

I will confess to you now in this narrative I wasn’t sure even then, with my resolve as strong as it was, that I would live long enough to put those protections in place.  I struggled with the pain and I struggled against my idiot heart’s repeated attempts to stop itself.  I fought through it to ensure a man capable of saving lives could continue to do so.

When John finally understood—the bottle of Claire de la Lune left by his chair started the dominos tumbling—he told me without prevarication that he hated her.  I tried to calm him, but he was incandescent in his righteous fury.  I’ve told you already what seeing him like this could do to me, and I was aroused as I watched him rage against the idea that he was even married, because surely that can’t be valid when he didn’t know half of who she was, because no bride of his, no _friend_ of his, would ever dare to harm me, let alone try to kill me.  He only calmed, and even then only a little, when I reminded him he had a child on the way.  I outlined the plan and, despite his simmering anger, he nodded stiffly and said to me: _Yes, right.  You have a plan.  Course you do.  We’ll play it your way, Sherlock.  But in the end I want my child and I want to be in Baker Street with you.  So, you know.  As long as your plan accomplishes all that in the end, we’ll do it your way._

I wanted that, too.  God, how I wanted that, too.

We discussed strategy for half an hour, which was barely long enough to explain the overview, but I was weary to my bones and I would need considerable energy to pull off the next part of the plan.  He comforted me and apologized for having fallen for her lies and therefore somehow gotten me shot.  I looked into his eyes and wondered if I was simply hallucinating, because I saw there for the first time true tenderness in his eyes for me, just for me. 

It was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds, to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay in my John’s eyes.

I rested and listened to him read to me from my collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  He read them well, his voice soft and musical.  He promised he would be with me while I recuperated properly.  I warned him again I would urge him to trust her, to take her back, but that it was part of the strategy, and that it was crucial his acting was the best it could be.  He promised that he would act worthy of a BAFTA award, because it was me at stake, it was _us_ , and that was worth the best of everything he could do.

I felt rather emotionally overburdened by all of this, all he was saying.  I didn’t want to misunderstand him, but I also didn’t want to ask him directly what exactly he meant by all this and thereby force him to let me down gently.  What a coward I was; but to be fair, I'd shown far more courage in the past several days than I thought myself capable of.  So I simply expected nothing.  I chose to interpret it as a result of his guilt, an overcompensation, perhaps.  It didn’t mean what I wanted it to mean, certainly.

We confronted Mary later that evening.  She was almost too predictable, really.  She fell neatly into my trap.  We got her back to the flat at Baker Street and I managed to get her to confess to some of what she was, John’s final condition to sever ties with her altogether.  Her confession wasn’t a chance to salvage some grace with him, as perhaps she imagined it was; it was the end of her marriage to him.  I was able to supervise that end before I collapsed.

John did care for me through that convalescence.  He was solicitous and accommodating of me, almost too much so.  When we first arrived from the hospital, he saw me to my bed and then crawled into it beside me, the _better to monitor my condition_ , he’d said.

He’s since admitted that was bollocks.  He wanted to be closer to me than he could admit, even to himself.

The intimacy of our friendship increased during that time, after our confrontation with Mary but before their “reunion” during the Christmas get-together at my parents’ home.  There were several little touches distributed throughout our day in Baker Street; his fingers lingering over mine as he gave me water to wash down the medication, the way he would smooth my hair away from my forehead before placing his hand on my temples to check my fever wasn’t returning, the hand on my shoulder that lingered just a little too long as he checked me for pupillary dilation response, a bright light in my eyes obscuring his face.  It was confusing and exhilarating and terrifying.  I loved him and I hated the hope in me.

Then Christmas Day came, and John gave Mary his carefully worded statement, his warning: “The problems of your future are my privilege.”  Because he would very much enjoy taking part in those problems.  He had every right to.

She misinterpreted the words as we hoped she would.  We disappeared shortly after, and we had our fateful run-in with Magnussen.  You know about all of that as well.

You know about our farewell on the tarmac.  You know that Moriarty came back and, as a result, so did I. 

But you don’t know the details of what happened when that plane touched down, because John was too good a man to tell tales on people he’s claimed to love. 

I have no such compunction, so that’s the story I will tell you now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to give praise and credit where it's due here and now. If you haven't checked out Ariane DeVere's transcripts for every single moment in every single episode of BBC Sherlock, you are missing something essential. Her work is meticulous and professional and has helped me keep the timelines straight for this story. 
> 
> Here, have a look: http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/
> 
> Also, please keep in mind that this story isn't nearly as clean and professional as her transcripts are. The chapters are mainly being posted with only the faintest hint of editing. So . . .thank you for your patience. xoxo


	8. One Word: RESURRECTION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tarmac scene and more talk of vows.

Time.  It’s a strange thing, a concept ruled by the inviolable rhythms of nature: the rising of the sun, the phases of the moon, the changing of the seasons, the living and dying of every beast on Earth.  As mankind grew ostensibly more civilized, we began constructing additional measurements for time, every one of them shrinking to measurements impossible to track organically.

Until something happens that requires such small measurements as heartbeats and breaths, then you find the liquid reality of time stretching to accommodate you.

This was the main part of our plan, mine and Lady Smallwood’s.  We had seen upon our initial consultation that the only way to stop Magnussen would be to kill him.  Any storage facility for secrets could have a backup or duplicated copy, and as long as he remained alive he would find a way to continue to his campaign of terror and shame.  We hadn’t truly expected that all of his blackmail fodder was in his head, but it didn’t matter, in the end; she had whispered to me that she wanted him dead for what he had insinuated in his threats.

I’m not an assassin.  I did not initially agree to what she had suggested, despite her assurances that it could be fixed to work out for me.  She promised that I would not go to prison or exile.  No one would be the wiser, not even Mycroft.

Again, I am not a contract killer.  I am not an agent of any organization, let alone the British government.  I did not agree.  I had enough blood on my hands from my time away from London, enough blood to give me horrid nightmares, a few of which John experienced during my recovery from Mary’s attempt on my life. 

But in the end, I asked her if she would hold on to her offer, in case it was needed.  I would create the deception and she would hold it in reserve.  Only if the right conditions were met would we implement this extreme solution.

The circumstances all fell in Lady Smallwood’s favor: Mary’s secret, the Watson baby, Magnussen’s mind palace, his threat to pursue Mary and, therefore, John, for the rest of their lives in an attempt to control me.  I wouldn’t have it.  I made my decision as I watched Magnussen flick John’s face, disrespecting him in the most brutal way he could short of rape.

I reached into my pocket and sent a text to Lady Smallwood, one word: RESURRECTION.  Then I became death again and ended Magnussen’s threats for good.

That set the stage for the return of Moriarty—well.  The digital ghost I created of him, anyway.  He was, of course, truly dead.  It would take a demigod to survive a self-inflicted kill shot, and I know for certain that he wasn’t one of those (since they don’t exist).

She arranged for my immediate return and Mycroft, clueless Mycroft, passed the news along to me.  I came off the plane to find John grinning widely at me and Mary growing more and more anxious.  I forced myself to calm, schooled my features, and addressed her directly.  “What’s wrong, Mrs. Watson?  Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

“He’s dead!” she said, her voice unusually shrill.  “John said . . .I know.  I know!  He’s dead!”

“Is that right?” I asked.  I pulled off my gloves and stashed them in my pocket.

She shook her head and one of her hands disappeared into the folds of her red coat.  John tensed and I gave him the smallest shake of my head: _No_.  “Sherlock, do you know what it means, if he’s still alive?  Do you?” she asked.

“There’s a contract, isn’t there?” I asked her.  I forced my hands to be still.  Every cell in my body was awake and aware, and I was watching her like I’d never watched anyone before. 

She gave a harsh bark of laughter.  “A contract?  There’s more than a contract.”  Her face went still and she pulled her piece.  She aimed it at me.  “It’s more than a contract, Sherlock.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s a _pact_.  It’s a _vow_.  You know about those, don’t you?” she asked, her head cocked to the side in that way she had when she was paying very close attention, when her psychopath was engaged and it was time to be serious and do business.

“You must know that you have at least five agents with their sights trained on you right now,” I said, my voice as calm as hers. 

“I made him a vow, Moriarty,” she said softly.  “You don’t break your vows, and neither do I.”

“Mary,” John said, his voice millpond calm, which meant there was real danger building in him.

“Oh, stop it, John,” she said, turning her face to him.  “I made a vow to you under an assumed identity.  The pact I made with Jim was made in the real world, for real reasons.”  She turned back to me and adjusted her aim, swinging her arm up and pointing the gun at my forehead.  “A real vow.”

“This is the second time you’ve pointed a gun at me,” I said softly.

“Yes, and this time my aim will be much better.”

“Your contract—your _pact, vow_ , whatever—was on John, not me, isn’t that correct?”

She sniffed.  “Doesn’t matter.  If I take you out it will make up for the fact that I hadn’t completed the contract before.  I might even get a bonus.”

“Bonus?” John asked, incredulously.

“I’ll be able to keep the baby,” she said softly, her hand falling to her belly.

“No,” John said.

“It’s up to you, John,” I said, and for the first time he looked me directly in the eye.  I recalled what he wanted out of all this: _But in the end I want my child and I want to be in Baker Street with you._

He nodded.  “Spare the child.”  Then he favored her with his most feral smile.  “But do whatever you want with her.  I never want to see her again.”

Mycroft was barely stepping out of his car, the surprise and confusion on his face nearly transcendent to me, when an agent fired a tranquilizer full of Bill Wiggins’ secret formula, adjusted for the baby’s development.  It landed neatly in the side of Mary’s neck.  John’s reflexes were, as always, excellent, and he caught her before she hit the ground.

Lady Smallwood’s agents moved and collected her over Mycroft’s objections.  He watched the scene unfold and it slowly dawned on him, all of it, the whole plot unfolding before him like an elaborate novel’s denouement.  He turned to me and his gaze softened.  He inclined his head and thereby silently admitted that, for once, I’d outsmarted him, outmaneuvered him. 

 As good as it was to see the plan conclude so neatly, as wonderful as it was to have Mycroft’s tacit approval of my scheme, and as gratifying as it was to have found a new ally in Lady Smallwood (who would go on to be a significant benefactor in my future career, but more on that later), none of it compared to the open relief, adoration, and affection I saw on John’s face when I finally directed my attention to him.  He smiled at me—not one of his grins, not one of his mischievous smirks, but a soft, warm smile.  He moved closer to me and spent about five seconds being awkward, his hands clenching into fists.  I watched him carefully, funneling all my nervous energy into hiding my love from him.  It nearly choked me, but I think I managed.  Barely.

Finally he cracked.  He grunted, said, “Come here, you tit,” and pulled me into his arms.  “You did it, Sherlock.  You’re amazing.  You’re fantastic.”

I was trembling.  It was over.  I was exhausted and relieved and thought I might be able to sleep for a week—but first I had to know the answer to a simple question:

“Does this mean you’re coming home?”  I didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed by my use of the word “home” in reference to Baker Street, or by my enthusiasm.  It really was the only thing that mattered to me in that moment.

He pulled away from the embrace and looked into my face.  I saw tears shining like jewels in his eyes.  “We have a little bit of a conversation coming first, yeah?”

“John,” I said, and again, I should have been horrified to hear the fatigue and desperation in my own voice, all of it manifest in that one syllable.

He shook his head.  “Oh, Sherlock.  Yeah.  Yeah, I’m coming home.”

  

* * *

 

 

We did have the talk he threatened me with, but it wasn’t what I’d feared it was—some convoluted attempt at getting me to confess to what had to have become an obvious (and almost hilarious) level of unrequited love for him.  No, he simply wanted to know how we were going to “baby-proof” the flat in preparation for his daughter.

We had the talk.  We made the plans.  I even allowed myself to entertain the thought of being a surrogate parent to an infant girl, and the concept wasn’t as repellant as I’d worried it would be.  I chatted with Mrs. Hudson about finally renting the C flat from her and relocating my laboratory equipment there, even adding a formal lab refrigerator in which to store my experiments.  We would take more care in where we left potentially murderous implements.

It could work.  I thought about how significantly a child would affect our lifestyle, our dynamic.  I’ll confess now that I was rather eager for it, eager to meet her and start this phase of my life.  After all, I was a new man, a mellower version of myself, the kind of man who could age well and be kind, and wise, and a good influence on a child.  All we had to do was wait for her to be born.

Sometimes plans work out, and time works in your favor, like it did on the tarmac.  Sometimes it doesn’t, and hopes and dreams are laid waste. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a pantser. What that means is that I do not plot my writing when I sit down to do that, which means that sometimes I can't adequately warn people about what's going to happen in a fic. This is a really awful way to do things, since I know triggers exist (they do for me, anyway) and I don't like feeling like I've trapped anyone or tricked anyone.
> 
> At any rate, I didn't know what was going to happen next until I got to this point, so please, my apologies are all I can give. If anyone reading this is hoping for Parent!Lock--I'm sorry. It's not in the cards.
> 
> I've updated the tags and that's the closest I'm going to come to spoilers. Please feel free to exit the ride if you don't care for the direction it's heading, and please, again know I wouldn't have done this on purpose. ~SW


	9. Condolences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: pregnancy loss through self-harm
> 
> “That all?” John asked.  
> “My condolences, John,” Mycroft answered.
> 
> Mary does the unthinkable, John begins to grieve, and he and Sherlock share confidences about what they mean to each other and the nature of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god I am so sorry. I'd blame life for the delay, but that's not all of it. This chapter was just terribly hard to write. It takes me to some intensely personal places in my heart and my soul. I could never have children, and I tried for so very long. What happens here made me angry and I suppose I held a bit of a grudge.
> 
> Now that this chapter is written, however, I feel that there's enough gaiety (HA!) on offer that I will be far more eager to set pen to paper (metaphorically, at least) and get this thing finished by Christmas. 
> 
> (A girl's gotta have goals, anyway.)
> 
> Thanks for your patience. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> TW: loss of pregnancy through violence. Skip this if you need to. I've tried to summarize enough of the key moments in the chapter summary.

There was no time for us to get into any sort of a rhythm after that moment on the tarmac.  I’d had a chance to visit Mary in the safehouse, an interview conducted through bullet-proof glass, but that was all.  We had barely enough time to secure things in the flat and reassure Lestrade that I was not, in fact, in exile (as apparently Mycroft had so melodramatically stated to him in private) before we received a text message from Mycroft:

_Emergency situation.  Report to safehouse immediately. MH_

John looked at me, his face blanking.  “What can it mean?”

 _Nothing good, John_ , was my initial diagnosis.  Mycroft would not have hesitated to share good news if there was any.  A lack of detail from him is always disturbing.  “I suppose we should head over immediately and find out,” I said instead.

The baby was gone.  Mary, during a brief respite from the cocktail of drugs that had rendered her pliant and almost complacent while everyone waited for her to come to the full term of her pregnancy, flew into a wild rage, escaped her restraints, and went on something of a tear through the safehouse.  She was unhinged and shouted the place down, cursing John and me, cursing Moriarty and Mycroft.  She finally laid hands on a large carving knife (there is no way to understand the utter depths of incompetence of the group that had been charged with minding her and rendering the facility a “safe” house, and Mycroft had received all of my never-ending scorn on the subject), and went about ensuring there was nothing left of either her or John’s child worth minding.

We were brought to a small, dark, silent conference-style room in the safehouse.  Mycroft appeared shortly after we were seated and gave us the news in his coldest, cleanest, most officious fashion.

I watched John carefully.  He shifted his jaw and straightened his neck, Captain John Watson reporting for duty.  His eyes flashed with flint as he regarded Mycroft, but he let him finish his story.  When Mycroft’s words drained away, I noticed that my brother, my esteemed, unflappable older brother, was uneasy.

“That all?” John asked.

“My condolences, John,” Mycroft answered.

“Do I have your assurances that this is true?”

Mycroft’s eyes shifted from his false compassion to shrewd in a heartbeat.  “Do you not wish to verify this—”

“By looking at a corpse?  _Do you want me to identify the fetus as well?”_ John spat, the fire of his anger scorching, and so deep beneath the surface it was nearly unfathomable—by anyone who hadn’t burned there themselves.

Mycroft sat back as if he’d been slapped.  “I thought—”

“Yeah, yeah,” John said, getting up and giving an inadvertent dry bark of laughter.  “You thought that after everything I’d been through with this one—” here he gestured absentmindedly at me “I’d want to make sure the deed was done and the evidence could satisfy me.”  He shook his head and shrugged into his coat.  “You don’t get it.  You can’t reassure me, Mycroft.  You’ve given me your evidence before.  Huh, it was about this one, if I remember correctly.”  Another absent gesture, and I was not at all liking how he called me _this one_.  It wasn’t fond, which means it was going to create more distance between us—and I suspected that once his anger burned down a little, he’d be in need of a good friend who could be close.

I stood as well.  Wherever he needed to be, I would be there beside him.  Whenever he was ready, I’d be standing by.  I would not let him escape into solitude.  I know the steel inside him, but this kind of betrayal was far worse, surely, than anything I’d done to him.

John turned to me.  His eyes were brittle and I could see the massive effort it was costing him to remain sane and seemingly unaffected.  “I have to get out of here,” he said simply.

“Of course,” I agreed without reservation.

“For what it’s worth, John,” Mycroft said hurriedly, standing from his place at the plain round table, “yes, you have my assurances my account of events is one-hundred-percent accurate.”

John made a sound that was supposed to be another cynical bark of laughter, but rather came out choked and far too wet.  “Yeah, I bet.  The only way I’ll know for sure is if she doesn’t come back, huh?”

He turned and deliberately opened the door to the room and closed it behind himself.

She didn’t come back.

 ***

As we made our way back to Baker Street I thought about my conversation with Mary, mere days earlier, where we talked about John and her capacity to love.  She had proven herself a true psychopath and she had removed herself from our lives, but I could not be grateful.  The man next to me was as tense as an overwound violin string, and I was afraid of putting one more ounce of tension on him by trying to make light of what had happened. 

The silence between us persisted as we made our way inside the flat.  John was restless; he put on the kettle, then proceeded to march back and forth between the kitchen and the sofa, his strides long and intentional.  He cast occasional glances at me, and I could see he was spoiling for a fight, for the right words to use on me to incite in me the anger he needed to reflect.

It was predicated on that understanding that I came to a decision.

_“Punch me in the face.”_

I switched off the kettle and hauled him down the stairs and around to the back of the building, into the alleyway housing the bins. 

“Hit me,” I said, and I pulled myself to my full height.

John bared his teeth at me.  “Don’t joke around right now, Sherlock,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous growl.

“Not a joke,” I said.

Without another word, John attacked.  His first blow caught me on the jaw and the second landed low on my abdomen.  He stepped back, analyzed me, then let loose again, this time a little less forcefully as he set about laying blows on my shoulders and my ribs, doing his utmost to shield the bullet wound.

“Hit me back,” he breathed as he stopped and pulled away, moving around me to survey my physiology for any signs of deep damage.

“No,” I gasped.  Everything was sore, and there was an awareness of every quarter of my body I hadn’t had in a very long time.

“Fuck you,” John whispered.  Spittle flew from his lips.  “Hit me.”

“I won’t.”

“Then you aren’t helping me!” he shrieked.  He flew at the brick wall of our building and drove his fist into its edifice.  “I may as well punch this wall _ow_!”  He shook his hand and I saw the blood welling on his knuckles.  He stared at the blood and giggled, and his giggle wasn’t that butter-soft high-pitched loveliness I’d fallen in love with shortly after we met.  This was brittle and harsh and it tripped over itself in its rush to get to a choked sob. 

“Let me look at this,” I said, trying to take his hand in mine so I could inspect the damage.

He pulled his hand away and cradled it against his chest.  “I was going to be a father, and now.”  He sighed and threw his head back to regard the distant stars, far overhead and only now twinkling awake.  “I was going to be a father.”  He sighed again, and I realized that he was trying to stop himself weeping.  “I should be inconsolable.”

“Some would argue that punching a wall—”

“Shut.  Up!” he screamed, and I saw that he meant to punch the wall again, and again, and keep on punching the wall until he’d broken some of the bones in his hand and, possibly, his wrist as well.  I captured his wrist just as he was pulling upright, pulling his arm back for the punch.  “No!” he screamed again, and he lurched in my hold.  I brought both of my arms around him and hauled him back into my body, then planted all of my weight in the soles of my feet and kept him from hitting that wall again.  I could feel my bruised muscles protesting this course of action, and when he turned his fists around on me again, battering me wherever he could reach, but I held firm and withstood the assault.  I let him rail it out until he was merely punching the air as a method of gesticulation.

“It’s not alright,” he said, and I realized only then that I’d been murmuring absent and clichéd reassurances at him.  “It will never be alright, Sherlock, do you get it?  She murdered my daughter, and I’m standing here like it’s any other day, like my child’s life hadn’t ended today.  Why am I not devastated?”

“You are, John.”

He turned to me, and I saw his eyes, razor sharp and filled with tears.  “No.  I know devastated.  I’m not that.”

I thought this through and felt my blood run cold.  “When?” I finally asked.

“When you died,” he answered, then went back into 221 and left me alone in the alley to collect my thoughts. 

They weren’t good thoughts.  I hated every single one.

I re-entered the apartment after him and found him switching the kettle on again.  He stood twitching at the kitchen counter and turned hooded eyes towards me, over his shoulder.

“When I died.”

He nodded, and I knew in this face that he would not tolerate any deliberate idiocy from me.  There would be no flippant statements about how I wasn’t really dead, so I cast aside that conversational gambit.

“You were worse.  Worse than this.”

He nodded again but was no longer looking at me.  I saw a small hitch in his shoulders that I was desperate not to identify. 

“Why?”

“Why what?” he asked, testy and a little too promptly.

“Why would you have been . . .worse . . .over me?”

He took several deep breaths in an effort to compose himself.  I gave him the time and space he needed to do it, but my mind was in freefall.  I didn’t understand this at all.  I’d concluded that John would have been either angry or cynical about my death.  That’s the soldier in him, the man who still struggled with PTSD.  Surely he’d put some emotional distance between himself and death after everything he’d learned.  This simply didn’t fit, the very thought of John . . . _distraught_ . . .over me.

John finally turned to face me.  He wore a smile on his face that was so emotional, so _devastatingly_ human that it nearly broke me to see it.  “You don’t know, do you?” he asked softly, and I heard something like pity in his voice.  “Amazing man with the all-seeing eyes, but you don’t see what’s so obvious to everyone else.”

“What?  What did I miss?” I asked. 

“You saved me, Sherlock,” John said.  He was clearly completely exhausted, and I should have been trying to figure out how to get some painkillers and/or sleep aids introduced into his system as soon as possible, but I was transfixed by him, by his words.  “You saved my life.  I was bitter, so _angry_ , Sherlock, that my own country would send me home with barely a pension after Afghanistan.  I didn’t want to have to deal with it, any of it: looking for a place to live, looking for a job, for _mates_ , weekends down the pub, a night in with a pretty girl to watch footy.  After the blood and the grit and the adrenaline I’d just come out of, none of that _normal_ stuff made any sense.  What was my life worth, what did it mean?

“Then there you were, in that lab, and you answered all of my questions by giving me new mysteries to worry myself over.”  He shook his head at me and a tired smile replaced the bottomless vulnerability for a minute.  I was mesmerized by him, by my John who could set my world upside down with his emotion and set it to right with a smile.  “I owe you so much, Sherlock.  Sometimes I think I owe you my very _soul_.”

It was the wrong time to confess the full scope of what he meant to me. I knew it in my bones, but we were in the middle of declarations, or so it seemed.  I couldn’t tell him everything, the matching sentiment to his declaration: _And I owe you my heart, John, seeing as you started it beating._   I had to say something, so I said instead: “You owe me nothing.  You saved me, too.”  I thought about my flat on Montague Street, and before that the rehab centre.  I thought about my crippling boredom and how certain I was that nobody deserved the help I was giving, the work I was doing to save lives, and how in the end I would be alone, unloved, and forced to watch my brain atrophy.  “You saved whatever there was in me that dared to believe in something noble, and you did that by being noble.”

John gazed at me then, at first trying to see through my words to some withheld deceit, some tactical advantage I may try to press later.  He saw none because there was none.  I’d given those words freely and with gratitude.  When he saw that he relaxed, marginally, and cleared his throat.  “That’s enough of that, I think.”

“Quite right,” I said with a curt nod.  I looked around the flat and noted that the tea had steeped too long to be a viable example of John’s preferences.  “Let’s get some curry.”

His smile was lovely, a benediction, and I basked in it.  “Yeah.”

 ***

That was the beginning of his healing.  It wasn’t easy, and I won’t detail every harrowing moment of it, the night terrors, the self-recriminations, the anger and fury (some of it directed at me).  But it was a start.

 

 


	10. Comfort Where One Finds It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock stands by John and things are said without saying.

Three months after our emotional outbursts in the kitchen, I found John in my bed for the first time (not counting the "monitoring" after I was shot, of course, because he was still married at the time).

It wasn’t the aftermath of a sexual fantasy come to life.  Admittedly, I had a brief moment of disorientation as I struggled to reconcile the warm, tousled presence in my bed with my reality.  John had been grieving his daughter by, apparently, being very tactile with me, and it was disorienting at first, since we were not the sort of friends who were demonstrably affectionate with each other.  He’d never seemed disposed; he kept a proper distance between us, did not hug other friends when he encountered them (no matter the length of absence, as I’d observed with James Sholto), and he hadn’t even been that comfortably intimate with his own wife, at least not that I’d ever observed.

But John had initiated the touches, sought out the reassurances that I was there with him in the flat.  He rested his hand on my shoulder as he leaned over my shoulder to check on some online research I was doing.  He caressed my hand after a cursory examination of a bruised set of knuckles.  He hugged me far more often than ever before.  This felt in a way to be an extension of the intimacy we had initiated during my convalescence, but then we had things to plan, strategies to consider.  This was the process by which we would feel out the edges of ourselves, and how best we could fit with each other again. 

It was the sweetest form of torture, having him always present and always receptive to me.  I tried to encourage him indirectly, giving him humour as payment for some small gesture, like brushing the hair from my eyes so he could see me more clearly.  Later I dared to reward him with the lowering of my own defenses, giving him a glimpse of my heart, a small smile to demonstrate my simple but heartfelt joy to be near him. 

You may be asking, _Was it an offer, these glimpses of your heart_?  My god, was it possible he did not already know he had it, had done, all along?

So I encouraged him to share more with me, to tell me stories of his life, to open up to me in a way I realized later he’d never done with anyone else—no, not even his wife.  His stories to her were all about me, you see. 

It was bound to happen, of course.  It was only natural that one of our cases would involve a pregnant woman.   They seemed abnormally abundant that year.  Was it mere perception elasticity at work, as it is when you purchase a new car and “suddenly” everyone on the road has your same make and model?  In restrospect, that’s likely.

This case was a very difficult one, despite the lovely outcome. By the time we’d realized that the gynecologist was only the last in a long line of victims, I’d gone several days without sleep and was concerned that I’d start to fall into the Valley of Bad Deductions, the horrid place I’m usually too stubborn to crawl out of until I solve the case (which of course takes too long when I’m stuck in the valley).  The dramatic finale, you know: John described it in the third book, and he called the case “The Folly of Our Four Fathers.”  He found the killer’s sister in labor and delivered the child himself.

I was mesmerised by the spectacle, of course.  Watching a new life enter this strange place is always fascinating.  But it was John, light shining from his face, his voice soft and encouraging as he took control of the situation and, by all apparent indications, in love with life and overjoyed to be a part of it, that was what took my breath away. 

I’m also fairly certain I’m the only one who noticed the tears in his eyes.

We left the scene with the standard assurances to Lestrade that we’d be by NSY in the morning.  We caught a cab in silence, rode in the cab together in silence, and went up to the flat in silence.  We fell into our separate chairs, each nursing a Scotch.  I gave him all the room he needed to say what needed saying.  He watched me, the caramel light of the flickering fire chasing warmth through the depths of his eyes.  His gaze never wavered.  I was caught in his gaze and I escaped it, over and over, until the whole damned thing started to feel like a dance, like a courtship.  I prayed he would talk, and soon.  My walls were strong, then, after the intensive and rigorous exercise of holding them up after so many intimacies with John over the past several months.  It didn’t matter how strong the walls around my affection were, however.  They could last all night and I’d still store every breath between us in full UHD resolution in my mind palace.  I was storing it all, every touch, every word, every glance, and it was wearing on me.  More priceless memories, and that was all they’d ever be.

I think he must have seen this on my face.  How could he not?  As much as I say the walls around my emotions were strong, the simple fact of my fatigue could not be hidden, not after so many days without sleep. 

He stood from his chair and shook his head.  “I know, you want to talk.  We should talk, Sherlock, about today.  About what happened.  About Mary and all that . . ..”  He sighed and smiled.  “But, not tonight, alright?  No words tonight.”

“John—“

“No.  Tomorrow.  We’ll talk tomorrow, about all that.”  He nodded at me, an officer’s dismissal.  “Good night, Sherlock.”

Then he turned away and marched up the stairs to his rooms.

I collapsed into the couch, curled towards the fire, and fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

I have something of a pattern, after a long case during which I haven’t slept well (or at all).  The first five hours of sleep are deep and dreamless, pure recovery of the machine, a recharge.  The next hour or two, however, is marked by dreams so vivid and intense that waking during that period is incredibly disorienting.

That’s what happened.  I was asleep on the sofa and dreaming of John during his stag night, warm and fuzzy and soft and safe.  I dreamed I was pulling down my defenses, the things keeping us apart, and he giggled and smiled and told me not to work so hard, the walls would fall on their own.  He reached out to me to show me . . .

And I was pulled awake by the sound of sadness.

I opened my eyes and saw him standing in front of the sofa, his arms crossed over himself.  He saw me come awake and turned away.

“John?”

“I’m sorry, Sherlock, I’m sorry, so sorry,” he stammered.  “I know you need to sleep, but I, I can’t.”

He was shaking with his grief, and his face was so full of pain I could hardly look at him. 

Without a thought, without a word, I held my hand out to him.

This is the moment, really.  That moment, with me half-asleep and convinced I was still dreaming, holding my hand out to John, weeping and distraught.  This is the moment that changed everything between us, that started the chain reaction that led to John Watson in my bed.  It starts here.

He stared at my offered hand for only a few seconds before he nodded to himself and grabbed on to me.  I pulled him down into myself and wrapped my arms around him, shushing him, whispering meaningless assurances to him.  I held him, because he needed holding and I needed to hold him.  To do otherwise would have been to watch him fall apart. 

He wept into my shirt, bitten off exclamations of pain and perplexed anger blending with the sobs to form a symphony of heartbreak.  He wept for long minutes, the grief cresting and ebbing like the tide.  I rode through it, vowing to be solid and immutable for him, his stalwart companion, as he’d been for me.

As these things do, his sorrow faded, hollowed out and exhausted.  I brushed his hair away from his forehead and checked on him: Yes, he’d had quite a cry, and a respectable volume of tears had made their way onto my shirt, but overall he seemed to be much settled.

“Better,” I whispered, and I brushed a kiss into his hair.

He smiled, his eyes closed.  He nudged into my arms again and hummed a response.

Only then did I realize that I’d kissed him, because my lips had started to tingle a little bit.  “You’ll be fine,” I whispered, and I was so tired and disoriented I wasn’t even aware I was throwing caution to the wind until it was long gone.  I pressed my lips to his head again, this time against his forehead.

John nudged into me again, burrowing deeper into my embrace, and my heart kicked hard against the pure flood of adrenaline running through my blood.  His nose nudged against my jaw and I was sure I hallucinated the quick press of lips against the skin of my neck.

I kissed him again, eyes screwed closed, my mouth against his cheek.  He kissed again, too, this time the soft skin under my chin.  My toes had curled in on themselves.  This had to be a dream.  If it was a dream, I would not waste it.  I slid my fingers into the hair dusting the nape of his neck, pulled his face closer to mine, and placed a soft, trembling kiss to his lips.

“Sherlock,” he whispered against my mouth, then he inclined his head just enough to fully return my kiss.

His lips were soft.  They clung to mine.  He sighed, and his breath ghosted over my lips.  That breath that had been in his body, warmed by his blood, giving him what he needed to stay alive—that breath, I wanted that, so I breathed it in, pulled it into me, John’s own breath.

He watched me do this and his pupils expanded.  “Sherlock,” he whispered again, but this breath was full of weight and sweat, friction and release. 

“No words, you said,” I murmured.  I wasn’t ready for what he apparently wanted, and it wasn’t the right time; he was emotionally compromised after the events of the day and I knew that any recklessness would lead to pain.  I pulled him to his feet.  “Just comfort tonight.”  I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.  I wasn’t saying no.  I didn’t want him to pull away from me.  “Let me, John, please.  Let me.”

He studied me again, then nodded again and followed me into my bedroom.

We undressed to our pants and got into the bed.  We turned to each other, then reached for each other, two men completely exhausted and unable to fight the need for intimacy any longer.  We met in the middle and kissed each other again, soft and clinging, tender and sweet.  There had been a hint of something sexual just a few minutes ago, but it wasn’t there now.  All I felt was the need to give him comfort, to reassure him.  I wanted to show him how I loved him without words.

We fell asleep in each other’s arms, and we slept for so many hours that we threatened to violate our agreement with Lestrade.  I woke first, as I often do, and found my arms full of John Watson, and after my initial disorientation I became so emotional I nearly wept over it.  I wanted to always wake like this, not just this once.  I didn’t want this to be the only time.  I wanted this for the rest of my life, my John with me, by my side, trusting, peaceful, and calm.

To protect his sweet serenity, I slipped away.

We didn’t mention it at all that day.  We didn’t say the words.  We went to Scotland Yard as promised, then had a peaceful lunch.  We returned home and I concluded an experiment on the soil samples Molly had provided from different locations in Rome (during the holiday she'd taken there with Lestrade, but the less said on that subject, the better).  I wrote up my results while John wrote up the case for his blog.  Our embrace of the night before might have been an overblown fantasy for all the evidence there was of it during the day.

That night John followed me to my bedroom as I prepared for bed, and I let him.  He crawled into my bed and I followed him, my last minute plans to plot out a new experiment involving venomous frogs completely forgotten.  He slid up against me and nudged me impatiently.  I wrapped him up in my arms and kissed him on the nose.  He smiled, tilted his head, and kissed me.

Soft lips, warm tongue, my John was teaching me how to kiss him, and I was paying attention with every one of my senses.  I learned, then I experimented, and I improved.  I kissed him in ways that seemed to make him sad (amazing how that makes sense to me now, how lovers can recognize a change of mood with little more than a kiss to go on).  I kissed him in ways that made him giggle.  I kissed him in ways that made him growl.  This was fascinating, and I never got quite the same reaction twice.  I wanted to do this always.

Eventually we gentled, having made some gentleman’s agreement at some point, and in some fashion that I do not recall, that we would never take advantage of the other, and if we crossed that line we wouldn’t be able to stop.

We shared a bed every night after that.  We kissed and held each other under the cover of darkness . . .and during the day, nothing was different.

I didn’t know what it meant.  I didn’t know what this was.  And it started making me a little crazy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm going to stop apologizing for how life keeps screwing me over and keeping me from this story. I'm just going to post what I have when I have it.
> 
> To those of you who have stuck with it: THANK YOU. I hope this chapter gave you a small taste of what's coming. :D


	11. The Black Swans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John explains to Sherlock how he coped after the Reichenbach Fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild TW: adults who *think* about doing lewd things with minors. No actual abuse occurs here.
> 
> What does occur here is some dreaming-smut between two adults who would both enthusiastically consent if they could stop being arseholes for a goddamn minute.

I remember the first time someone told me about sex.

I was eight years old.  My tutor, Mr. Calloway, was a man in his early fifties, and portly to the point of everything about him being round: his face, his hands, his feet, and most notably his torso.  It would have been pleasant if he’d been a jolly sort, but his dour demeanor led to an impression of sourness, and perhaps that more than anything gave me the impression he even _smelled_ sourly. 

We were alone in his studio and were rifling through books filled with natural sciences lessons, looking for one that might be a challenge.  He stopped abruptly and asked if I’d had _that talk_ with my parents yet.

“What talk?” I asked.

“The one, you know, about intercourse.”

I knew the word, of course. I’d heard Mycroft use it with Father in reference to a conversation, and I’d read it, and its definition, in our large dictionary when I was four.  I didn’t understand why the word merited a whole separate conversation with my parents, however.

I’m guessing my expression told him as much.  “I don’t mean conversation.  I mean, er, sexual intercourse.”

I felt a deep sense of unease, perhaps because there was an unflattering sparkle in his eye that indicated that he wanted to tutor me in an unsavory way.

Later, when I recounted this exchange to Mycroft (who handled it in his efficient manner), he advised me on what Mr. Calloway had meant.  We started with an observation of breeding horses, then worked our way through the animal kingdom until finally, Mycroft explained to me how it was done with humans.

None of this appealed to me.  This was a biological function, an exchange of genetic material—a clever way to perpetuate a species, I grant, but that kind of thing was best left to those interested in it.  I had no interest, none at all.

This attitude persisted through primary school and on into my time at Eton, though I will admit that the changes to my body and the resulting demands it made on me to at least consider sex drove me to distraction.  The fact that, to most people, I was attractive, did not help in the slightest.  I was the subject of multiple offers, but I felt pride in my ability to rebuff them all.  I even made rather an exercise of finding different ways to manipulate people with the aid of my face and form.

* * *

I maintained that pride until the morning I woke to the sensation of John’s erection digging into my backside.

I’ve already explained how I’d come to want him in a physical way I’d all but decided would never apply to me.  I still wasn’t quite certain how I could ever bear to let all of my defenses down with anyone, but I knew I’d been willing to do that, for John.  But here was nothing less than a request for entry—a knock on the back door, if you don’t mind the crudeness.

I froze.  I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.  This could, after all, be nothing more than a bit of morning tumescence.  It happens to all men, sooner or later.  It did not have to be anything so flattering as a non-verbal statement of interest in me.  John wasn’t gay.  I wasn’t sexual.  We were best friends (who shared a bed and spent time before sleeping wrapped around each other, tongues driving deep into each other’s mouths), but nothing more.

In hindsight, I realize now I was a rather spectacular idiot.

At some point, John’s dream must have gotten the best of him.  He slowly started to rock his pelvis against my backside.  His arms were wrapped around me already, but they tightened, and his breath came hot in my ear, accompanied by small, choked off moans that never left his throat.

My John, the soldier who defended me against all threats, was two thin layers of material away from taking my virginity.

I gasped as I felt the head of his penis negotiate its way through those layers so that it was wedged firmly between my gluteal muscles.  The fabric covering it was growing wet with his arousal.  I could feel the hardness of him, the insistence of his erection as it struggled against the fabric and found the vulnerable knot of my anus.

“John,” I grunted, but he was now moaning directly into my ear.

“Sherlock,” he whispered, and goose flesh rose along my arms.  I realized then that I wanted this, now, with him.  I wanted to cast off my clothing and receive him, open myself to him completely, allow him to know me in every way two men can know each other.  The thought made my eyes prickle with tears; to have anyone _know_ me fully, when I spent so much of my life wrapped in artifice and covered in armour—that thought was overwhelmingly heartwrenching.

_I don’t have to be alone if he’s inside me._

“John,” I whispered as I shoved my hand down my pyjama pants and closed it around my own erection.  The pleasure was almost beyond reckoning and I screwed my eyes shut.  I pumped myself in time with his thrusts, now grown ragged and erratic.  His breathing was now coming in deep gulping gasps.  His penis was shoving against my anus, and I was fascinated to find that the slickness that had soaked through our pyjamas had made it possible for just the smallest bit of it to truly penetrate me.

 _Yes_.

“Sherlock—” he growled, then I felt a flood of warmth across the material between us.  My jaw dropped open, and my orgasm quickly followed, triggered by the thought that I had done that to him, to my John, I had given him a surrender to pleasure even across the barrier of dreams.

It was this way, covered in my ejaculate with his soaking through from the other side, that he finally came to consciousness.

“Oh, oh shit,” he stammered as he jackknifed out of bed and scrambled for the toilet.  He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.

I lay in the sticky residue and wondered what could possibly come of this.

  

* * *

 

 

I remember every moment of the next hour.  After the events unfolded, I slipped into my mind palace to ensure not a second of it was lost.  I therefore present the following as a play-by-play recollection, a replay that I’ve relived from time to time, and no more frequently than I have in the past week.

John had started the shower in the bathroom, and I knew, _I knew_ that he would try to escape the flat.  I knew I couldn’t allow that to happen, because there was no guarantee he would ever return.  I quickly removed my soiled pyjamas and wrapped a sheet around myself so I could perform a rudimentary bath in the kitchen sink.  Once I’d hurried through that task, I returned to my bedroom (casting little more than a wistful glance at the rumpled bedclothes) and exchanged my sheet for black slacks, white shirt, and black jacket.

It was just in time.  John emerged from the shower, wearing the striped jumper and denim jeans he kept in there for emergencies, and immediately made for the front door.  I decided that fastening my belt around my waist was a priority for another day, and I called out to him as I heard the door to the flat snick shut: “John!”

I had forgotten how fleet of foot he could be when he was determined to be.  I chased him down the stairs and out the front door, barely catching his wrist as we emerged onto the kerb.

“What?” he asked.  His face was pink and his hair was wet.  His lungs struggled with the depth of his frantic breathing.  He looked terrified.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”  He gestured around him.  It had just finished raining, and the sun was shining almost too brightly on everything around us.  “It’s a nice day out, Sherlock.”  He pressed his lips together, and I was struck with the overwhelming sense memory of how those lips had moved against mine the night before: soft, tender, sweet, even a bit possessive.  Oh, how I _wanted._

Dopamine and oxytocin were still swamping my system, and I wanted to drag John back inside and claim him for my own, finally, _finally_ , but apparently first things had to be said.  I had to find the right words.  Unfortunately, finding the right words in a sentimental situation has never been my strong suit.  “Why?” I asked.

He blinked, hard.  “Why what?  Why am I going out?  I just said—”

“Why now?  Why _right now_?”

“Because . . .” he trailed off, looking around him, then gave a helpless sigh and sagged.  “I have to say some things, and I can’t say them.”

“Can’t?”

He shook his head and turned his beautiful deep blue eyes away from me.  “Not to you.”

I still had hold of his wrist.  “Then, to whom?”

He blinked, hard.  It could have been a way to adjust to the overwhelming brightness of the morning, but I saw the glittering tear that spilled down his cheek.  His hand trembled; I could feel the motion reverberating up his wrist.  My John, my strong warrior and defender, was afraid.

“When was the last time you were in Regents Park?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard.  I shook my head.  “The last time we went, together.”

It had been before I’d fallen from the roof of St. Bart’s.  The morning had been lovely, much like this one was, and I was trying my best to enjoy John’s company because I already knew I would be forced to part from him.

He nodded.  “The swans.  The black swans—do you remember them?”

I did.  I nodded.

He slid his hand down into mine and gripped tight.  I stopped breathing.

“A couple of years ago, the female was mauled by a fox.  She didn’t survive it.  You know those birds mate for life.”  I nodded.  He continued.  “They were together more than seven years.  They started bickering and they were separated for a bit.”  He shot me an aggravated glance, then turned away again.  His hand was burning into mine.  “The male started calling for her, though, so they brought her back.  That’s when the fox . . .”

“Is this about Mary, then?” I asked.  I was impatient.  I didn’t understand the point.

“Damn it, Sherlock.”  John dropped my hand.  He turned to face me again.  "When the female died, I understood what the male was feeling.  I understood it completely, because . . .when you left, when you _died_ , I realized that I’d already forgiven all of the arguments we’d had.  I just wanted you back, whatever it took.  I cried for you.  I _called_ for you, asked you to not be dead.”

He’d told me this once before, but there was a new depth to the statement that I hadn’t heard before.  I had nothing I could say back except what I’d already said.  “I heard you.”

“When I was able to go out in public again without seeing you everywhere, I went to visit the swan.  He looked like I felt: defeated, alone.  Black swans already have a rather bereft look, y’know?  And he was so dignified in his mourning.  I wanted to be dignified, too, not the wreck I was.  He was handsome, tall, rather posh.”  John shrugged.  “When I looked at him, I saw _you_.”

“John.”

“I went rather often, to see him, to talk to him.  I told him everything I never told you.”  He shrugged.  “That’s how I met Mary, really.  She was a fan of the black swan, too.”

“What did you tell him that you never told me?” I asked, my voice softened to a whisper.

“Deduce it, genius,” he said, his voice gravel.  He shook his head at me and proceeded to cross the street, headed for Regents Park.

I thought about it for less than five seconds, then followed him.  My heart was racing.  I tried to remind myself that the conclusion I’d come to was only one of several possible solutions, but I was so tired, and I wanted to melt into him.

I found him at the pond in Queen Mary’s Gardens, watching the lone black swan.  The swan appeared to recognize John and swam towards him.

John knew I was there.  I could feel the tension coming off him, but I also recognized the steely set to his jaw.  He meant to see this through.

“Hello, old friend,” he said softly as the swan approached.  The swan fluttered its wings softly at him.  John gave him a tight smile in return.  “I think . . .I think I fucked up everything this morning.”

I wasn’t meant to interfere, so I didn’t.  I only watched, mesmerized.

“I’ve told you that I’ve kissed him, haven’t I?” he said, his voice now so soft it was little more than a whisper.  “I’ve told you that we don’t talk about it, him and me.  We don’t talk about any of it, about Mary and the baby, about the lies and the secrets.  We just . . . _stay_.”  I had an unwelcome vision of Moriarty on the roof, but I shook my head and it disappeared.

“But this morning,” John said, then stopped.  He seemed to chew on his words, then he tried again.  “This morning I dreamed I was with him, in every way.  I dreamed that it was something we do, that he let me touch him like that, even though, God, even though I know he wouldn’t want that.  But I do.”  His face collapsed and he covered it with his hands.

I took a step closer to him but he stilled me immediately with a hand held up, palm towards me, and a quick shake of his head.  He squared his shoulders and plunged forward, words tripping over each other.  “I want it all.  I want to hold him at night and in the morning.  I want to tell him all the things I’ve told you, how hard it was when he was dead, how I needed someone to give me a reason to live now that the only reason that meant bugger-all to me was gone, how I realized my mistake with Mary as soon as he came back, how I tried to make it work because _he doesn’t feel things that way_.  I need to tell him.”  He turned to me, his eyes shining.  “I need to tell him he’s my reason for living, the only reason that’s ever made me happy.  That I would follow him into death before I tried to go on living without him again.”   He sighed and folded his hands behind his back, trying to stand up straight in a soldier’s rest.  “That I love him with my whole heart.  I need to tell him that so he understands why it happened this morning.”

My lips were quivering. 

John loved me.

Time slowed to a crawl around us.

I took several wobbly-kneed steps closer to him.  He didn’t stop me this time.  I took him in, soaking in the sight of him.  I can still see him as he was that morning: freshly-scrubbed, silver/gold hair drying in the sun, eyes shining, nervous smile on his mouth.

“You think I didn’t want what happened?” I asked.  Despite what others may have said about me, I know very well how to maintain a respectful distance from other people; infringements on others’ personal space isn’t really as appealing to me as it’s been made to seem.  That morning I cared nothing for personal space.  I was his, and if I could somehow keep from bollixing it all up, he would be mine.  There is no need for personal space between two people who love each other.

“Did you?  Want that?” John asked.

“You,” I whispered.  I placed my hands on his face in time for one of my thumbs to catch a fresh tear, sparkling like a diamond in his eyes.  “Only you, ever.  I want you to . . .I want you, John.”  I bent forward over him.  “I want it all, too.  I want to say the words in the sunlight so that you hear them, not just in my head, in the dark.  I love you.”

He whimpered and leaned up to meet my kiss.

And that was how we came to kiss each other in the broad daylight of a gorgeous spring morning at Regents Park.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the tale of the black swans is real.


	12. CONFIRMATION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Got an eyeful of that photo, eh? Want an official statement from the two of us?

You can imagine that I was quite swept up in that kiss.  I was overwhelmed, and I use that word in its most literal sense: I was crippled by my emotions and completely incapable of handling anything apart from what I was feeling.  It was intoxicating and beautiful beyond reckoning.

It should therefore help explain why I did not notice—nay, why I didn’t _anticipate_ —the amateur photographers lurking behind several nearby fixtures.  The snaps swept from Instagram to Twitter to Tumblr in an internet heartbeat.  The only thing that brought us back to ourselves was the insistent twanging from both of our mobiles, indicating a flurry of furious texts.

Mycroft had quite a lot to say on the subject of my very-unwittingly-public displays of affection for my blogger.  We were intercepted and coerced, with insistence, into a sleek black saloon and brought to the Diogenes Club for a bit of privacy and a great deal of silent malevolence, courtesy of Mycroft.

The experience was doubly frustrating; not only did I have to deal with the pong of disappointed disapproval, but I was thoroughly distracted by the presence of the man I’d kissed in Regents Park.  It was certainly a trick of my mind—and that should have alarmed me—but I was certain John was _glowing_ , a sort of golden bioluminescence making his skin shine.  Every time he caught my fixed gaze, he gave me a small smile.  Every small smile made me giddy.   The joy pressed my heart from the inside, stretched it until it was larger than it had been.  Again, sentimental twaddle, but those were my impressions as I watched him and grew hugely frustrated at my brother’s overprotectiveness.

All I remember of the eternity we spent there was this exchange between my brother and John:

“Give me my phone, Mycroft.”

“Dr. Watson, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Just want to update the blog, is all.”

“What on earth would you post?”

“Confirmation.”

“Confirmation.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Bugger wise.  I’ve been making myself crazy for the last five years of my life, insisting I wasn’t gay when anyone—and everyone, judging by half the conversations I have daily—could see I was completely gone on him.  I have spent every day since Mary died coming to terms with how I feel about him, accepting what I wanted even though I knew—ha, I _knew_ —he could never want it, too.  Didn’t matter.  I’d never have touched anyone else, because I’m his.  So that’s what needs telling.  I’ll confirm what everyone but me has known for years, then we can go home and get on with our lives.”  He turned to look at me over his shoulder and gave me another of those small smiles.  “ _Life_.  Our life.”

That was all I needed to hear from him to set my feet firmly on the path I’d dreamed of, but dared never hope to tread.  This was no lark.  John wanted permanence, and with me.

I turned to my brother and let him see the naked need in my eyes.  I lowered my chin—which I hated doing with him, because it made me less—and I said the thing I never say to him: “Please.”

Ten minutes later we were in another black saloon, speeding towards Baker Street.  There were a few people gathered on our front step, but that was easily managed.  John stopped, though, before we opened the door.  He turned us to face the cameras and winked at them.  “Excuse us, please,” he said crisply.  “Terribly rude, I know, but I’ve been waiting my whole life for this, so a little privacy.”  He pressed a kiss to my cheek and opened the black door, then hauled me inside and slammed it shut.

I fully expected him to press me against the wall and take a kiss from me.  I braced myself for it.  It was a romantic notion, I know, but I’d grown rather fond of those in the past several hours. 

He did not.  When I opened my eyes (I’d closed them in anticipation of the kiss against the wall that never was), I saw him looking at me with that fond, concerned, almost-exasperated expression he often wore. 

“Sherlock?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You look terrified.”

I took a quick inventory of the flood of emotions going through me.  “I suppose I am, a bit.”

He shook his head at me.  “No.”  He sighed, then said, “Right then.  Let’s go to bed.”

This confused me, and being confused exasperated me.  I was not managing the flow of data well at all.  “Bed?” I asked.  “It’s not gone seven yet.”

“Close enough,” John chided as he manhandled me up the stairs.

I didn’t suppose I could argue with that, even though a part of me—the part that was horrified over my compromised emotional wall—insisted that the logic didn’t follow at all.  There seemed to be no chance that my ability to reason with myself, let alone anyone else, would be returning soon, so I simply surrendered to John.  He was exasperated, and he was far more capable whilst exasperated than he was any other time.

We arrived in my bedroom—our bedroom?—in short order and he bullied me over to what had been established as _my_ side of the bed.  He pointed at me, then pointed at my clothes (you’d think there could be no way to differentiate those gestures, but it turns out that paying attention to his eyes was key to that), then marched around to his side of the bed and began to disrobe.  I got the gist and did the same.

We stood on opposite sides of the bed, naked but for our pants, and _stared_ at each other.  I’d seen him in various states of undress over the years, but I’d never seen him where my facial expressions could be free, where I could stare unabashedly and appreciate him without reservation.  That’s what I did now; I gazed upon him with the rapt reverence of a pilgrim laying eyes upon Mecca for the first time.

His voice drifted over to me from across the bed, the groan in his voice unavoidably sexy: “You know we don’t have to do anything physical, Sherlock.  We can take this slow—that is, if you want any of that at all.  We don’t have to—”

“John.”

“But I would like to go on record as wanting that.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.  But . . .slow.”  I did not say aloud _because I’m out of my depth, but more importantly because I want to remember every moment._

The nervous smile on John’s face told me he understood it anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

**_John’s Blog Post: “CONFIRMATION”_ **

_Got an eyeful of that photo, eh?  Want an official statement from the two of us?_

_Fine.  You’re getting one, and only one._

_We’re together, and we will be for the rest of our lives, however long that can possibly last.  We’re an item, romantic, sexual, all of that.  I’m completely taken and so is he._

_We don’t need any congratulations because it took us too damned long to get here, and we don’t need any antagonism either.  If you want to send us a fish slice or a kettle, please forward to: The Devil, care of Hell._

_*comments disabled*_

 

* * *

 

 

We did not turn out the lights that night, not until sleep became inevitable.

That was step one: The lights stayed on so we could see each other, so we could feel that intimacy and put paid to the fear that one or both of us was imagining someone else.

We kissed and kissed each other.  We gazed at each other.  We were carried away by the emotion running strongly between us.  My John was kissing me: not just a man, but the man everyone called _freak_ , the man who’d bullied him and insulted him and ignored him, the man who’d nearly killed our friendship by leaving him behind.  My John was kissing me, and he was as emotionally devastated by the act as I was.

For all that it was only kissing that night, it was the most erotic experience of my life to that point.  We caressed each other and lightly rubbed against one another, but the friction wasn’t enough to get us off, so we took turns finishing off in the bathroom.  Not as awkward as it sounds; thinking of him in the shower, wet and pulling on himself, gave focus to my own lazy masturbation, almost enough focus to make me finish in the bed.  I got into the shower with mere moments to spare and somehow managed to avoid John’s knowing smirk.

We fell asleep curled together, murmuring our love and devotion to each other.

 

* * *

 

 

I’d never slept so much or so well in my life. 

Whenever we were alone, we soon found ourselves in bed with each other.  I discovered that John was as good as his word: We would go slow.  That made every encounter an expression of joy, unfettered from expectations.  He assured me that whatever I wanted was fine, but if I was ready to take the next step we should discuss it first.  Those discussions often led to heated snogging, of which I’d grown unbearably fond.  My bed was soon infused with our combined musk; it became _our_ bed, and it remained thus until he rather abruptly left me a little more than a week ago.

The first time I was able to bring him off with my mouth was electrifying.  We’d done what he suggested; we talked it over first.  I insisted that I wanted to hold his gaze the whole time.  I did not want him hiding from me during any of it.  I observe.  I deduce.  He had to let me.

It was a far greater struggle for him than it was for me, despite the fact that I had never done anything like this before.  From what I knew of the average British male’s penis, I thought John’s was very attractive; slightly larger than expected, thick throughout the shaft with a foreskin that snugged up nicely over the head when he was not erect, but retracted nearly completely when he was.  Which—reassuringly, to my ego—was very often.

So I had no issue at all with placing such a wondrous thing in my mouth.  Keeping his eyes open, _looking at me_ while I did it, that was the issue.  He would squint at me as if in pain while he watched, and his eyes shone.  My deductions soon took over and I was able to reduce him to a quivering mess in short order, and soon he was muttering my name like an incantation: “Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock oh god, Sherlock.”

He was asking me to make a decision, and I made it.  I loved the taste of him, and how it persisted in my mouth for what felt like hours. 

A few weeks later he tried out the act for himself.  There was a great deal more reluctance on his part; he stared at my penis for long minutes and cleared his throat repeatedly.  I did not chide him, no matter my impatience.  This was a final barrier, for him; there was no way to deny how _gay_ this act was.  Soon enough he spoke up and confirmed my theory:

“I know, I know,” he stammered.  “Get on with it.”

I shook my head.  My erection hadn’t wilted in the slightest.  “No.”

Perhaps he didn’t understand my negative, because he continued as if I’d confirmed his statement.  “It’s just.  This.  There’s no going back from this.”

“We don’t have to do this.  Not at all.”

“Sherlock.”

“As long as you don’t start lying to me and telling me that you don’t like it when I do it to you, then we’re sorted.”

“But.”  He fixed his gaze on my penis again.

“But what, John?”  It sounds impatient.  It was, a bit.  But I like to think that it was also a bit indulgent.

“I.  I want to.”  He looked up into my eyes and I saw a tense hunger there.  “I want to do to you what you do to me.”

“You can do that with your hand.”  I cleared my throat.  “And, you have.  Definitively and with great effect.”

He let out a hard bark of a laugh.  “Yeah, ta, mate.”

“John, whatever you want to do, as long as you want to do it.”  I bent forward over him and cupped his face in my hands.  “As long as you never leave, you can have whatever you want of me.”

He shook his head and gave me a trembling smile.  “Never leaving.  And, right.”  He pulled away from me and clapped his hands together.  “Have whatever I want of you.”  He winked and took my penis, somehow _still_ erect, in his hand and gave it a confident stroke.  “Turns out I want all of you, especially this.” 

He then treated me to my very first blow job—as a recipient, of course.  And it was a little awkward, and nervous, at first.  But as it got properly going, it became intriguing, and surprising, and then I realized that he was fellating me in a way that mirrored his appearance in my life: awkward, hesitant, then surprising, and brilliant, and _essential._

Yes.  Essential.  Oh, John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little fluff and lite smut here to cleanse the palate before we get on to the ending; only a few more chapters, I think.


	13. A Sword of My Own Crafting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has to face the truth: He is not the better part of this relationship.

 

Two months after John had performed his first act of fellatio on me, and we were out of the headlines.  We were back on cases, and settling into our new sense of happy domesticity.  We were both working up the courage to propose the next and final step in our physical relationship, but I was still researching methods and practical considerations, and he was still trying to come to grips with the fact that he wanted to fuck a man and, maybe, eventually, be fucked by one.

One especially brutal case, involving a possible copycat cannibal rampaging through London caught us up in it for several weeks.  We were too late to several of the crimes, and it was wearing on me.  I won’t go into detail, since the identity of one of the victims made the case rather confidential (yes, even now), but I think it should be sufficient to say that it was a sensation and, with the right clearance, you can satisfy your sick prurient curiosities elsewhere.

What’s relevant is that the killer/discriminating gourmet had a pattern, and his pattern convinced me I could find him if I was just vigilant and brilliant enough.  I think I’ve mentioned before, however, that the longer a case dragged on the harder it became to solve, since I did not allow myself to rest until it was done.  I was completely crippled, therefore, when the final victim was abducted.

John.

He vanished on his way home from picking up a takeaway, yet another valiant attempt to force me to take care of my transport.  I didn’t even notice until two hours had passed, so lost was I in my exhausted stupor.  Once I did realize, however, I flew into a blind panic that achieved nothing but infusing me with enough adrenaline to finally make the connections that would have been obvious to me if I’d been rested.

I called Lestrade and, for once, rode in a panda car at speed as we made our way to the killer’s home, a run-down row house in Peckham.  John was strapped down to a large table, and the insane cannibal waving a gun at his forehead.

The killer was startled when we burst through the door—so much so that I saw, heard, and _felt_ the gun discharge.

My eyes blistered and were temporarily disabled.  I staggered back, away from the table, and my body flashed cold.

I wish I could contribute in the old way to John’s blog, with too much predictable melodrama, but I cannot; I do not at all remember what I thought.  I rather think that, for the first time in my life, my mind had fallen altogether silent. 

You might wonder how that can be, since I’d had orgasms before.  You must understand, however, that even during my climaxes my mind was never fully silent; it was thrumming with a low, intense whisper, _John, John, John, John . . ._

But this was different, terrifyingly different.  It was an empty chamber, a vacuum.  My senses had vanished into a small white point. 

I fled into that point.  I followed it, trying to pull something back out of it, but there was nothing.  I hoped that all of this was happening in my imagination, but I rather knew it wasn’t.  And I knew where I was physically moving myself to.

I didn’t care.  Nothing mattered.  I knew the size of the pain waiting on the other side of this void, and I wanted nothing to do with it.  I would do anything, I would endure anything, to not be impaled on that sword, a sword of my own crafting, to be sure . . .and it would therefore be the most devastatingly effective sword there had ever been.

I mixed the solution myself.  There was a split second of consideration of mixing a fatal high, but I shoved it aside.  Just a little less than that.  Just enough to make me erase everything for a while, to escape this new reality as long as I could.  I’d stay alive for a miracle, but not for anything less.

I wrote my list for Mycroft and held it in my fist as I tied off the tourniquet.  The plunger drove home and I fell away.

 

* * *

 

 

_“Sherlock.”_

I understood my name.  I floated just out of reach of fully understanding who was speaking: male, probably.

 _“Sherlock, I think . . .no, I_ know _you can hear me.  Don’t be stupid right now, Sherlock.  Listen to me.”_

Mycroft.  Damn.

_“About John—”_

No.  No, I can’t hear this.  I can’t bear it.  I floated a little farther away, just far enough to hear the right thing.  If Mycroft said the wrong thing, I wouldn’t hear it.  I’d drift away again, and possibly never come back.

_“He needs you.”_

_Needs_.  Present tense.  That would be the correct tense.  I moved a little closer.

_“I’ve made him go home.”_

No.  No.  A little farther away.  Knowing Mycroft that could be a very bad thing, the worst thing. 

_“But he’ll be back very soon.  He hasn’t left your side, but I’ve finally made him go.  Ahem.  He was drawing complaints about his smell and the insanity in his eyes.”_

John.  Alive.  John.  My John.  Alive.

And then I felt an overwhelming sense of dread and shame.  Whatever happened at the killer’s operations centre, it was nowhere near fatal for John.  I’d overreacted in the most spectacular way, abandoned him, and went straight for the narcotics.  I’d been an absolute coward, not at all what he needed.

Instead, here he’d been, tending to the needs of an inveterate junkie.

I was no good for him, not at all.  His association with me had ended with him tied down to a table and nearly killed.  His love for me meant he would tend to me even if I was never capable of returning the favor.

And indeed, his association with me must be ended.  I could not do this to him; I could not saddle him with this kind of burden.

I needed a plan.  I needed to surface as quickly as possible and make a plan that would spare him from me.  I loved him too much, and it would be the greatest gift I could give him.

_“Little brother, I see you’re back with me.  Do not do this thing you’re thinking of.  It would fall to me to look after Dr. Watson if you ever decide to disappear, and I assure you, despite the imposing strength of my own surveillance staff, he would find a way to evade them all and end himself before he’ll live without you.”_

Oh, that hurt.  The very thought of a world without John Watson in it hurt desperately.  I’d tasted the pain of it for less than five seconds and knew I couldn’t bear it. 

_“So here’s what will happen, Sherlock, if you have half a brain in your head left, after that chemical cocktail you’ve fed it: You will awaken.  You will recover.  You will stay clean.  You will, because your doctor requires it, and he deserves better than all this.”_

What John deserves.  Oh, what John deserves.  He deserves—

_“After all, doesn’t he deserve to grow old, happy with the person he’s chosen?”_

For just a moment I saw Mary in my head.  I saw her bleached-blonde hair, her sharp, red smile, her eyes, warmth dancing like winter sunlight on a frozen lake.  But Mycroft wasn’t talking about her, was he?

_“He’s chosen you, Sherlock.  Try to be worthy of him.”_

Be worthy of him.  If I put my best effort into it, every day of my life, I would likely still fall short of the mark . . .but . . .

But what if I could pull it off?  What if I could be everything John needed, everything John deserved?  What if I could provide him all of that?  What if I could rise above this selfish need to avoid pain and to show off, and be the steady companion he’d proven himself to be, over and over?

The grandest experiment of my life would be my quest to be the man John deserved.

_“I do hope you’ve heard me, Sherlock.  I must be off.  Your John will be here in just a few minutes, and I’m overdue for a private audience with a fond ally to the Crown.  You do understand, because of that, this entire investigation is now confidential, don’t you?  Of course you do.”_

Without another word I heard my brother make his way out of my hospital room.  As he’d advised, John came in a few minutes later, out of breath, a tremor in his voice.

_“Saw your brother on his way out.  He thinks you’re making progress.  Sherlock.  God, Sherlock.”_

I could sense my body again—at least, that bit of my arm John grasped as he sank down into what I had to assume was a hospital chair, a horrid plastic affair that had to have been hell on him for however long I’d been here.

_“If you are improving, if you are coming back to me, listen to me now.  You have got to stop trying to leave me, do you understand?  I can’t do it, Sherlock.  I’ve told you already, I will not survive it again.  I’ve aged three years in the past three days.  I’ll be dead before the end of the month, you mad tosser.”_

I heard a sharp sob and then felt a warmth through the material of the shirt, and I was struck by the thought that warmth might be his tears.  My John, weeping over me.  He deserved better—not better _than_ me, but better _from_ me.

And he would get it.  By god, I would be everything John deserved. 

Do you see now, Dear Reader, how ridiculous it was, how _galling_ , to have Irene Adler Norton imply he was the one who’d struck lucky?  Every day it was me, every moment, a gawky, terrible drug addict with a flair for the dramatic and a death wish-level adrenaline fixation.  How could I have ever been so wrong about her intelligence?

How could I ever prove myself to this man?


	14. A Return to Intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys finally, FULLY get it on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! It's been SUCH a long time since I've updated. That's a depression thing, unfortch.
> 
> But this morning I woke up to some amazing art by [aiwa-sensei](http://aiwa-sensei.tumblr.com%22) (I'm inserting it into the appropriate place in the story) and it got the juices flowing again.
> 
> Speaking of flowing juices (ick?), here's a bunch of smut to thank you for your patience.

My recovery from my near-overdose was slow, much slower than it had been in the past—which I suppose was a testament to my advancing age, which should have concerned me far more than it did.

The truth of the matter is that I was being pampered, and was pleased by the pampering, and distressed by the fact that I was pleased.  After all, I had recently vowed that I would be less selfish, but when John was giving me all of his precious attention, I could not turn him away.

It was, truthfully, a halcyon time, much like the few weeks after I’d been shot—but without the fear that haunted me at that time.  We cocooned ourselves in our flat, and John was never far away from me.  It was quiet and peaceful, with the occasional interruptions of text message chimes or the low murmur of voices on the telly.  He was concerned with my liver and kidneys and any potential long-term damage they may have sustained; I told him there was nothing to be worried about, but John only gave me his best tight-lipped expression and went on with dinner preparations.  If I were forced to complain about anything from those first two weeks, it would be that he was overwhelmingly stubborn in his denial to me of any salt or alcohol.  My food and my beverages were blander than chalk, and it was revolting.

That is such a minor complaint when contrasted against the totality of my contentment, however, that I want you to forget it immediately.  John was my physician, yes, but he was, more importantly, the dearest friend of my heart, and he coaxed the story of what had happened to me out of me. He explained to me that the serial killer we’d targeted had planned an “exquisite” night of torture and death for John (as the killer himself had described it to him), and that my arrival with a full retinue of the Met’s finest had caused an unbelievably clumsy reaction: a shot gone wide, a struggle, and a grazing injury from a knife across John’s knee.  He showed me his wound and allowed me to distress myself over it, then asked me to put it out of my mind.

I never could.  The injury to his knee caused a slight limp that, while not truly psychosomatic, became aggravated in moments of extreme distress, as with Irene Adler Norton’s visit not long after.  I blamed myself for that wound for the rest of John’s life.

I remember feeling deeply unsettled by the thought of resuming our intimacy.  I still wanted him, of course I did, but I could not see how a man like him could ever again want to put his hands on a drug addict like me.

He was, apparently, experiencing the same reservations.  We were quietly affectionate: hugs, pecks on the cheek and in the hair, fingers lingering—but there was no attempt to make it deeper, to make it more.

Much later, after we resumed our full intimacy, I asked him what had held him back, and he answered thus:

“Honestly?  It was two things.  I didn’t want to push you past what you were physically comfortable with, to start.  I still didn’t know the full impact of what you’d gone through.  But the rest?” He shrugged.  “I didn’t know for certain where we stood.  I mean, we’d been doing so well, but touch can make grief so much more awful, and I wasn’t sure you wanted that . . .distraction.”

What changed all that was a perfect morning.  You know the type: the sun is bright on a freshly-showered world, but not too warm.  The birds are singing, the people on the street are friendlier than usual, and there is a general certainty that anything that happens on a day like this one will be _right_.

I woke curled in John’s firm embrace for the first time in over a month, and he accommodated me when I stretched.  I blinked my eyes open to see a riot of complex emotions on his face, and before I could react to them all he kissed me.

It was a long-lost sensation that was miraculously restored to me: the bitter tang of an early-morning kiss, the way John trembled, the incipient joy and accompanying dread that this would be snatched away from me, like it had been before.  I therefore said through the kiss everything I could, how welcome it was, how much I’d missed it, how desperately I hoped that all reservations were at an end.

I was thrilled to feel a similar message coming from him.

Our embrace caught fire.  We pulled at each other’s clothing and rolled, wrestling for control of the kiss.  At one point he called me a “stubborn git,” and we exploded in breathy, frustrated laughter.  We finally managed to get our clothing off, pieces of it littered all around us on the bed.

But then came the moment when we had to decide how we were going to proceed, and without a word I pulled the lubricant from the top drawer of the table on my side of the bed—the poor, neglected lubricant that we’d all but forgotten about once we’d discovered John’s skill at fellatio—and handed it to him.  His eyebrows shot up to nearly his hairline.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He studied me for a moment, his hand coming up to gently cradle my cheek.  He saw the resolve on my face and nodded.  “Right.”  He slowly dripped lubricant onto his fingers while he said, “Now listen to me.  We’re doing this, but we’re doing this slowly.”  He blinked and caught my gaze.  “Neither of us has ever done this and I don’t want any mistakes or harm done.  Do you understand?”

I nodded, because all that really mattered was John saying _We’re doing this_ in his Captain Watson tone of command.  I fell back on the bed and my limbs unlocked, resulting in what felt like an ungraceful sprawl.

John apparently did not agree with my assessment.  “God, you’re beautiful.”

A deep, hungry pit opened up in my belly and I wanted him in me to fill it.  I rolled my head back and exposed my neck.  “Get on with it, John.  Hurry, before I die.”

“And that’s probably as close to begging as I’ll ever get from you,” he said, then placed his dry hand on the back of my left thigh and lifted it.  His wet hand traced a firm path from my scrotum and back, until his index finger pressed against my anal sphincter.  It was a sign of my readiness for this, of my _desperation_ for this, that I did not flinch away from him; instead, I pressed back.  I felt the muscle flutter and I felt his wet digit slide in.

He clamped his eyes shut.  “You want me that badly?”

“Oh yes,” I whispered.  I was lost to the sensation of a part of him inside me, and I wondered at the thought that if we weren’t interrupted by anything short of a fire or explosion, soon a larger part of him would be inside me.  “More.”

“Slowly, I said that, remember?”

“God, John, stop talking.”

He did, and he pulled the tip of his finger free only to massage the muscle with two fingers and his knuckles.  It felt warm, and slick, and relaxing.  Whatever tension had been added to me at the feel of his finger was gone, and when he placed the finger against the muscle again it slid home even easier.

In this way my John prepared me, with soft words and knowing hands, and when he found my prostate the encounter suddenly became heated and reckless.  No matter his admonitions that we take it _slow_ , I was ready.  I could tell that somehow my reactions to him had made him ready, too.  He pulled his hand free of me and pressed my thighs back against my abdomen.  I felt his cock slide against my scrotum, then along my perineum until it caught against my lax hole.

Carefully, steadily he pressed inside me.  We maintained eye contact.  I was completely exposed to him, no artifice between us.  I let him see it all; the life I’d led before him, the way he’d changed me.  I let him see _me_ , the man he’d saved from a life of cold detachment.

Once he was fully seated inside me, he sighed.  “Oh, god, Sherlock.  So good.”

I was struggling with the sentiment, and I could tell he was, too.  It was a foregone conclusion between us, the love and the commitment, but this final frontier of intimacy was too massive for us to process.  I had to say something to cut through it.  “This may be the gayest thing you’ve ever done.”

His eyes grew wide as saucers and he started to laugh, a true, sincere, high-pitched sound of joy ringing through our bedroom.  I can’t tell you how unimaginably good it felt to experience his laughter from inside me.  “Oh, yes,” he said.  “I’m a regular butt-pirate now.”

“I like pirates,” I sighed, and stretched.  The burn of his initial thrust was fading, and it left behind a pleasant sensation of fullness, of completion.  He was with me as completely as he could ever be, and it was surprisingly . . . _comfortable._   “Move, John.”

He did.  His hips twitched, and his thrusts were gentle, acclimatizing at first.  I watched him watch me, my reactions, and when he found no discomfort (there was none), he began to move in earnest.  The motion of his hips—Dear Reader, I cannot express to you the perfection of how my John makes love.  His reputation in this area, though perhaps a little exaggerated, is in no way undeserved.  His hips roll, they tease, and the way he observes during the act puts me to shame.  He is the perfect sexual partner.

Naturally, I say that with no experience of any other, but I have been kept so satisfied and so spoiled through our life together that I never felt the need to run any experiments.  Which, of course, in itself should testify to his skill.

He found my prostate with his cock and in seconds I was hurtling towards orgasm.  I thrashed, but he could not be dislodged.  His focus on maintaining the perfect angle was incredible.  I looked into his eyes, the eyes of determination, of passion, and when he saw me watching him his face softened.  He smiled.  “Come for me, Sherlock.  I’ve got you.”

So I relaxed into the oncoming orgasm and gave it all over to him.  I clenched on his cock and I felt him throb inside me.  He bit off a curse and orgasmed, filling me completely with a rush of warmth.

We remained this way, joined, until he softened too much to maintain it.  He reached beside him for the first article of cast-off clothing he could reach (turned out to be his pants), and pressed it against my bum to catch the flood of his semen as it poured out of me.

He kissed me softly and promised to promptly return with a better way to clean me up.  I felt loose and warm and comfortable, and I felt myself slip into a doze.  He returned with a warm, wet flannel and another dry one and set about cleaning us both.

Once he was done he slipped again into our bed.  “Alright?’

“More than,” I whispered.

“Hungry?”

I checked in with my transport and was surprised by the answer.  “Famished.”

He chuckled.  “I’ll make you a fry-up.”

“Not yet,” I murmured, and buried my face in his neck.  His musk surrounded me.  I was so in love I could barely breathe.

He sighed.  “No, not yet.”

When finally we stirred, he made the fry-up and I was amused by his expression when Mrs. Hudson came to call and complained a little about the noise.  I promised a solution, and, although John did not completely approve, my suppliers became her suppliers, and kept her well stocked with herbal soothers for the rest of her life.

 


	15. The Truth About Happy Endings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, everybody. The end of the ride.
> 
> I really, really, really can't tell you how much I appreciate you sticking around for all this. It was horrifying and sad and angsty, and I know the fluffy bits don't quite cover up all the dark bits--but I hope it was enough. 
> 
> ~SW

The last time I made love to John Watson was three weeks ago.

We’d just returned home from the Sussex-based office of the doctor John had been seeing since we’d first moved to the country ten years prior, Dr. Nigel Smith.  I hadn’t liked him from the start; he seemed lazy and overly superficial to me, always joking with the both of us about our minor celebrity status and how boring the change to our lives must have been.  He’d inherited his practice from his father, who’d apparently been cast in the same mold as my John: a decorated war hero and lifelong preserver of the life and health of his countrymen. 

This good doctor’s son tried to deliver the news of John’s esophageal cancer with his standard bad humour, and to say it fell flat would be the understatement of the century.  We both sat across from him, wordless and transfixed by our reactions: For John, one of pure shock, his jaw dropped in disbelief; for me, wordless rage that this imbecile could think there was anything funny about the news he was delivering: _malignant, metastasized, really remarkable how quickly it was spreading . . ._

Two weeks.  I would only have John for two weeks.

I was incandescent with my rage when we returned home.  Of course we returned home; John was mulish, and refused to listen to reason.  That was what prompted the most violent display of my temper in over a dozen years; after all, why should I mute my distress when, in two short weeks, it would all stop mattering?

John was tired.  That was something I’d grown accustomed to, and it irked me now.  Every sign of what was happening to him irked me: the fatigue, the lack of appetite, the heartburn we’d joked about so often.  He had been wasting away before my eyes and I’d been blind to it, so enamored I’d been of my beehives and the hours and hours of time I now had to conduct my little experiments.  None of it mattered anymore.  The only thing that mattered was _two weeks_ , and how could I possibly have enough of him in that time, when no amount of his attention had ever been enough?

We had a one-sided row.  I hurled accusations at him, mean-spirited jibes that he’d known this was coming, how could he not, he was a doctor after all; he’d known and he’d kept it from me, kept me contented with my ignorance while he wasted away and hoarded the knowledge of his impending death like a martyr.  He was no saint, I’d said.  There would be no chapels, no sacred spaces dedicated to his sacrifice after he was gone.  He’d been nothing more than selfish, and how could I.  How could I?

“I mean, how could you?  How _could_ you, John?”  I was crying at this point, and I turned away from his soft, sad eyes.

“I didn’t know,” he said softly.  Again.  He’d been saying it the whole time.  “Once you reach this age, Sherlock, you tend to see every morning as a miracle.”  He put his hand, now covered in liver spots and wrinkles, over top of mine where it rested, trembling, on the top of the table at which he’d sat.  “And every morning already is a fresh miracle, because more often than not you’re there with me.”

I sank into my own chair, heaving deep breaths into my lungs.  I let him fold me into his arms, because that was what we did when the world became too much, and I was devastated to think that, in this moment of exposed mortality, he once again took to comforting me.  I was always the weak one, you see?  He was always the strong one, the one who protected, who comforted, who took precautions and gave care.

“It’s my fault,” he murmured into my hair as I sobbed into his chest.  “All my fault.  You’re right, I should have seen, but I had grown careless.  Our luck always held, didn’t it?  I turned it all off, Sherlock, because our luck always held.”

I knew what he was referring to, and I didn’t care.  So what, if he turned off all of his self-diagnostics and ignored the warning signs.  I had no device for traveling through time, so I could not go back six months and warn him that heartburn wasn’t always a symptom of spicy food, sometimes it was the warning of an unfriendly visitor to your body.

I couldn’t save him, and thus began the worst time of my life.

But first, John took me to bed.

At first, it was just for a nap.  I realized with a churning, anxiety-ridden stomach that he’d been napping so much lately, it had become something of a joke between us.  Nothing seemed funny anymore.  The well of laughter he’d planted in my heart when he told me he was in love with me dried up that day.

We lay together, pressed close, and I was observing him differently now: instead of feeling contentment and comfort in his touch, I felt only dread.  Every inhale and exhale drew him that much closer to the last, and I clutched at them, and I despaired.

After a doze, he came to and resolutely set about removing my clothing.

I meant to protest, I did.  I meant to tell him to cling to every moment of his life, and not waste any of it reassuring me this way, because now every reassurance diminished what time was left between us.  But I saw in his eyes the cold glint of steel, like I had so many nights chasing the criminal element through London.  I saw his resolve, and his determination, and I heard in his shaking whisper of appreciation for me what he meant by it all:

_What does my life mean, if it isn’t spent loving you?_

It was tender and true, and every ounce of pleasure wrought by my endlessly talented John was heartbreaking.  No matter how often I insisted I was beyond such sentiment (and the insistences were thick on the ground until that photo taken of us in Regents Park), I do have a heart, and it hurt so much that day that I didn’t know if I would survive it, and thought that dying with him would be a grand thing to do.

I had apparently started babbling into the silence of our bedroom, because John started to shush me: “No, love, no.  You are not done yet.  Please don’t say that.  Don’t die, Sherlock, my gorgeous black swan, don’t even think it.  There’s one more adventure in you yet.”

When we were done striving together for that once-elusive and now well-known land of bliss, and we lay spent in each other’s loose embrace, I traced the old pockmark of the bullet wound on his shoulder.  He picked idly at the small crater on my chest, the remnant of the damage done by his wife.

“It’s how I need to think of you,” he whispered, finally.  The sweat on my body was cooling quickly, and I pulled the blankets up from where he’d flung them and allowed them to flutter down over us.

“What is?” I asked.

He smiled at me.  “The famous Sherlock Holmes, coat swirling—”

“I don’t have that coat anymore.”

“Don’t I know it,” he whispered sadly.  “Lady Smallwood tried to replace it after it burned in that fire, but nobody got it quite right.”

I nodded.  It was true.  We’d handled a lot of Queen-and-Country (well, King-and-Country, now, I suppose) cases for Lady Smallwood after the adventure of the Risen Moriarty.  We’d been incandescent, brilliant to the point of being supernatural, and the only injury we’d suffered in all that time had been the loss of my coat in a warehouse fire.

“What I’m trying to say is, all of this is going to be far more difficult if I am forced to watch you waste away, too.  You have to endure, Sherlock.”  He leaned up on an elbow and I saw him wince with a little bit of the pain we’d associated with old age.  I wasn’t so sure of that, anymore.  “You have my heart in your keeping, right?  And as long as that’s alive in you, I’m not dead.”

Two weeks later, a week ago, he said something very much like that on his death bed: “You’re immortal now,” he whispered to me.  “The books.”  He gestured through our bedroom door at the door to his study, where the physical incarnations of our adventures sat on a shelf, waiting for him to return and leaf through them with that small smile on his face.  “You’re legendary now, Sherlock, and I’m honored to have been there to see it.”

I shook my head at him.  “You are greater than I am,” I whispered back.  The afternoon was made for soft murmurings; one of those clear, crisp days in early March when winter clings to the frosted windows, but the sun burns through the frost by mid-afternoon. 

I’d had to say things like this to him very often over the years, and he always dismissed them with a smile and a flick of his wrist: _Pshaw, you’re exaggerating, you biased arse._   In his more indulgent moods, belly full of a big meal and satisfied after an energetic run through London then a frenzied roll in bed, he’d elaborate: “Oh, my life has been fine, lots of interesting things going on—but you made me _more_.”

The idea caught in my mind, then, that I should use the time after his death to explain my side of things; finally, I would have the room and the time to do so, without his constant interference and insistence that it was not necessary.

This tale, then, has been my final adventure, the long overdue homage to the best man I’ve ever known, the most selfless, strongest, funniest, bravest, and brightest man, a man whose very concept would have seemed impossible to the young genius junkie who’d lived in Montague Street.  Mycroft once called him the making of me.  He was at least right about that much.

The evening John passed away was lovely and cool, the scent of petrichor creeping in through our bedroom window.  I was propped against our headboard, and I had John curled against me, his back to my chest, my arms around his waist.  I breathed in time with his labored breaths.  I breathed deeply of the scent of his silver hair, and I let him feel the tears that would not stop falling from my eyes.  I whispered to him all the things I’d never had the courage to say, all of my weakness and doubt, all of the ways he’d saved me, I counted them back to him one by one.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he whispered, and then, “I love you, William Sherlock Scott Holmes.”  He clutched my hand in his weak, trembling one, then slipped away.

There was no one to hear my wailing.  There was no one to keep my from the extremity of my grief.  The only thing that has kept me alive is my determination to see this tale through to the end.

But Dear Reader, I hope you understand now that I’m tired.  I don’t have John to mind me anymore, and I don’t have to mind him.  The house has, therefore, fallen into an unforgivable state of _dishabille_ , not the tidy, organized appearance it had for years.  I’m afraid I’m rather rumpled, myself; I have not shaved in weeks.  I have not laundered my clothing.  I have done nothing but keep my bees and my silence, attending only to the whispered musings of the ghost in the house.

Am I satisfied with how this tale has concluded?  Oh, I wouldn’t say that.  John thought I was legendary, and in a way he tried to tell me it made me rather an immortal.  I wish I were, honestly, but only if he could be with me.  Life with him by my side was an exhilarating rush through adventure and madness, with lovely spaces of contentment and joy throughout.  Life without him holds no appeal to me, none at all.  Despite my bees, it is a wasteland of grey.

I am, however, satisfied that I have made my point.  I am little more than a ridiculous boffin, after all.  I solved puzzles for a long time, and often in the service of the Angels, as Moriarty would have said.  I was never one of them, I maintain that even now. 

But John was.  Turn to him if you want to know what a hero is.  Turn to him to understand _me_ , and whatever in the world could have made me noteworthy.  Read his words, certainly, but remember mine, whispering to you that he is more deserving of admiration and respect, because he made me what he thought I should be.

The evening has rolled in.  I think, Dear Reader, this may be my last.  If you will excuse me, I plan to take this glass of wine with me into John’s study, that long undisturbed place, and breathe deeply one more time of the scent of him, absorb his presence there.  I’ve missed him, you see, and I need him now.  I feel very alone, and I don’t want to be, haven’t wanted to be in decades.  I will retire to my doctor’s presence and stay there until I’m done.

I wish you well.

Regards,

Sherlock Holmes

 

**EPILOGUE**

Sherlock Holmes obituary

The Guardian, 8 April, 2046

_William Sherlock Scott Holmes has died aged 70 in his home in Bognor Regis, West Sussex._

_Mr. Holmes, who in his role as a private consulting detective achieved a great deal of fame and renown, passed away on April 5 th.  He was found in his study at home by Molly Lestrade, a long-time friend.  He is survived by his nephew, Ramsay Holmes, son of his elder brother, Mycroft Holmes._

_Mr. Holmes achieved celebrity status in the early 2010s, when his long-time friend and assistant, Dr. John Watson, began to publish stories of their adventures in his personal blog. He was credited with the capture and conviction of dozens of murderers, thieves, and criminals who would compromise the security of His Majesty’s realm.  In his later years he retired to Sussex to establish a well-regarded beekeeping operation.  He will be remembered by many forensic scientists as an innovator in the field, as well as many fans who still faithfully return to Dr. Watson’s blog.  A final post on the blog, apparently written by Mr. Holmes himself, was the prompt that led Mrs. Lestrade to look for him and ended in her fateful discovery._

_A memorial service is to be held on the 12 th of April at 11:00 am in St. Paul’s for all who may wish to pay their respects to Sherlock Holmes._

 

Molly closed the cover to her tablet after reading the obituary and laid it on her lap.  She was tired, and she felt that she had aged ten years ( _ten years I can’t afford_ , she thought) in the past week.

But she could not help her bittersweet smile.  She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d have to wait to join her own hero (Greg had been gone for five long years now), but she had always known that Sherlock wouldn’t survive long without his John. 

She thought again about that last blog post, about the way Sherlock had ripped the bandage off his bleeding heart and exposed it to the world, and her brittle smile fell away.  She closed her eyes and thought about the way it had been, all those years ago, to watch his genius and how he’d blossomed when John had stepped through that lab door.  _We were so young_ , she thought, and pictured herself in that yellow affair she’d worn to John’s wedding, then the blue one she’d worn to the Holmes/Watson wedding, then the white cocktail dress she’d worn to her own.  _So young, and so stupid.  We wasted so much time._

But in the end it had been no waste at all.  This was how happy endings really turned out, after all; a little old woman sifting through her happy memories to keep away the sharp, black despair.

She shook her head and got to her feet.  Tea.  That would fix it.  That would remind her of those times, and the breathless delight, and the laughter of her friends.

That would be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I've added art by archia-art. OMG.
> 
> UPDATE (11/7/2016): The unbelievable aranel_parmadil is podficcing this work. I might have vomited. (I definitely vomited. Not my proudest moment.) Seriously, though, I'm trembling because she's so remarkable, both as a human being and as a voice artist. Homage! Pay it!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Dear Reader](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8499190) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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